IVF, surrogacy, sperm donation, feminism

[loopdeloo]

Firstly, I should say that I have just had a second round of unsuccessful IVF and it looks like this is not going to work out for me and DH, so I am having a lot of emotional and confusing thoughts and I really hope people can bear that in mind if I say something offensive on what is a hugely sensitive topic and please forgive me if I get this wrong.

Because of our situation, we are now being talked to about egg donation (i.e. attempting IVF with another woman's eggs and my DH's sperm). I don't want to do this because it doesn't feel right for me personally for a number of reasons, one of which is it just feels too "Handmaid's" and that I would be a vessel to provide my DH with his own genetic offspring. He completely gets this, and the other reasons that resonate for both of us, and we are looking at adoption instead.

I have two sets of lesbian friends who have children through sperm donation from someone they knew. In one family, the father is involved, in the other he is not, although he is not being kept "anonymous". This has never seemed to be much of a problem to me. I also have one set of gay male friends who have adopted 2 children in the UK and they are wonderful parents and although it has been hard, their experience has really helped DH and I look at adoption positively.

And yet now I have a couple of male gay friends who have decided to go to the US to have a surrogate mother - who will be anonymous to the child - and it is making me feel deeply uncomfortable. The total cost is going to be near on $100k and they are spending time browsing through brochures of women's profiles. As I type, I'm not sure why the cost is relevant and yet it seems to be so I'm going to leave it in the post. This seems even more 'handmaid's' and I can't quite get my head round it.

Is this just a purely irrational and emotional reaction due to my personal struggle with infertility, or is there a feminist issue here? I am aware that I'm all over the shop emotionally at the moment and that there is the potential for great hypocrisy here and I'm genuinely interested in your thoughts and not looking for agreement or sympathy.

[Leilaniii]

LassWiTheDelicateAir, so what you're saying is, because they're gay, they don't deserve to be parents?

[MMmomDD]

OP - I am sorry for your struggles.
And you are, of course, entitled to your opinions.

But not everybody who uses a surrogate is a Kim Kardashian, or an entitled rich person. And not everyone who uses donated eggs is a vessel.

A few of my dear single female friends had to go that way for medical reasons. And kids that were born are beautiful and they bring joy to their families.
A friend who used a surrogate - had tried IVF and her body just couldn’t sustain a pregnancy. And she had one embryo left. Just one. And the surrogate had a few kids already and sure, she was paid. But she wasn’t a poor exploited woman.

And my other good friend. She had a terrible luck with men. For years. A then she tried IVF on her own. A few times in the UK. But it’s very expensive here. She couldn’t afford to continue, and by then her eggs weren’t there anymore.
Donation of both egg and sperm was the only way.
She gave birth to her child. She wasn’t a vessel. He is hers.
DNA is only a small part of it all.

Nothing Handmaidy about any of these.

[loopdeloo]

Leilaniii - they can adopt.

[SylviaPoe]

Gay men can be parents, and many are. They donate sperm to single women or lesbian couples.

Nobody deserves or does not to be a parent, anymore than people do or do not deserve cancer.

[loopdeloo]

MomDD - a major difference here when it comes to being a "vessel" is that your single female friends were trying to do IVF on their own and were already using sperm donors before the question of egg donation or surrogacy. It's a different scenario to me taking an anonymous woman's eggs and undergoing IVF and potentially a pregnancy so that my husband can have a biological child.

[Jinglebellhell17]

If you would feel third wheel in the scenario of using a egg donor would you go for egg and sperm donor with you carrying? That's an option too.

[Leilaniii]

loopdeloo, why don't you 'adopt' an embryo? Then it is biologically neither yours nor your husband's. There are literally thousands of leftover embryos. Most embryo adoptions are coordinated by religious groups in the US, but it might be worth thinking about?

[MMmomDD]

Loop - you can chose to look at it this way.
The way my friend looked at it was - she wanted to carry a child. Feel it grow in her body. Bond with it.

What if the issue was you H’s sperm? Would you also not want to try another IVF?

I am not saying you are wrong in anything.
I was just giving you examples of how other people looked at it.

[loopdeloo]

Jingle - I need to further explore adoption first. I am not naive and know that adoption is extremely tough from start to finish but I can't get my head round the ethics of artificially creating a life from someone else's gametes when there are children in this world (and I am a dual citizen of a country that is much more open to international adoption than the UK so I'm not exaggerating when I talk of "this world") whom I could provide a family and home for who would otherwise be in care or an orphanage.

[GuardianLions]

it is close to eugenics, however isn't it anyway, when we choose a mate? We are (generally) attracted to good-looking, healthy, clever people to mate with.

Attraction is sophisticated - involving reciprocity. Complimentary antibodies, pheromones, compatibility, etc.
What you are talking about is more like a brothel, where men get to choose who they want to penetrate, impregnate.

This idea that we 'choose mates' suggests everyone can control who wants them back and who will want to have kids with them. This is very divorced from reality, where huge numbers of people are disappointed in that regard, and actually smacks of sexist evopsych bullshit.

[LassWiTheDelicateAir]

Leilaniii

LassWiTheDelicateAir, so what you're saying is, because they're gay, they don't deserve to be parents?

Stop that right now. I have been quite clear that I am opposed to lesbian, gay, or straight couples buying babies. I didn't even think "they" was referring back to the OP's gay friends. I took it to mean the very general clause of "they" who are hiring the bodies of attractive Ivy League students.

[LassWiTheDelicateAir]

What you are talking about is more like a brothel, where men get to choose who they want to penetrate, impregnate

It is exactly like a brothel. The sex and sexual persuasion of the buyer is irrelevant.

[MMmomDD]

OP - I hope it works or for you, whatever you chose to do.
And I hope your choices is not only driven by disappointment at unfairness of this all.

However, I can’t shake the feeling that if the genders in this post were reversed - and a man was posting that he doesn’t want his W to use donor sperm (to compliment her healthy eggs) and wants them as a family to adopt instead - I wonder what comments he’d be getting here.
I think they would have been very different.
Maybe I am wrong.

[Leilaniii]

But don't we hire out our bodies every time we go to work? I am 100% against prostitution by the way, I'm just putting this argument out there.

[LassWiTheDelicateAir]

But don't we hire out our bodies every time we go to work?

Oh can shout bingo? I was waiting for this one.

[SylviaPoe]

Why put the argument out there then, if you don’t agree with it?

[GuardianLions]

I think ejaculating sperm and carrying a pregnancy to full term are very different things MMmomDD

But I don't see any ethical differences between egg and sperm donation - apart from the fact that harvesting eggs is more dangerous and invasive for a woman, than a man donating sperm.

[Leilaniii]

No, I meant I am against prostitution.

[loopdeloo]

^However, I can’t shake the feeling that if the genders in this post were reversed - and a man was posting that he doesn’t want his W to use donor sperm (to compliment her healthy eggs) and wants them as a family to adopt instead - I wonder what comments he’d be getting here.
I think they would have been very different.^

But there have been lots of posts encouraging me to use donor eggs?

DH and I have of course had the 'what if the roles were reversed' conversation. It is me who is driving this as it is me who would undergo further IVF treatment and pregnancy (if successful). There's no point going down the hypothetical scenarios of what it would be like if my eggs were fine and my husband's sperm wasn't, though, because that's not the case. I have enough to think about as it is, without thinking about hypothetical situations that have no chance of ever being a reality. It's not a philosophical thought experiment.

[LassWiTheDelicateAir]

However, I can’t shake the feeling that if the genders in this post were reversed - and a man was posting that he doesn’t want his W to use donor sperm (to compliment her healthy eggs) and wants them as a family to adopt instead - I wonder what comments he’d be getting here
I think they would have been very different
Maybe I am wrong.

I don't follow your logic. Using donor sperm is not remotely comparable to hiring another woman's womb.

So far as a husband not wanting to be a parent to a child conceived by donor sperm that is his decision. It may well end the marriage but I think he has every right to take that position.

As Sylvia said no one deserves to be a parent and they absolutely do not have the right to force someone else to go along with making them a parent.

[Leilaniii]

...they absolutely do not have the right to force someone else to go along with making them a parent.

No one's forcing them, to be fair. My friend who was a surrogate was paid $120k and put up in a beach house in Malibu for a year.

(Disclaimer: this was the US, I know things are not the same everywhere).

[SylviaPoe]

Well, yes, things are not the same elsewhere, because almost all other countries are signed up to protect international women’s rights.

[LassWiTheDelicateAir]

The comment you have quoted was in response to the question posed by MMmomDD of the situation where a husband might refuse to allow his wife to use donor sperm. I think a husband is entitled to say he does not want to be a parent in those circumstances and his wife has no right to insist he does.

Your friend hiring the use of a womb is completely irrelevant to the point I was replying to.

[LassWiTheDelicateAir]

Or to be accurate your friend hiring out her womb for $120,000 is irrelevant to the question of whether one partner in a relationship should be forced to go along with becoming a parent if they don't want to.

Everything you post just firms up my view that surrogacy is wrong and commercial surrogacy doubly so.

[ftw]

No one's forcing them, to be fair. My friend who was a surrogate was paid $120k and put up in a beach house in Malibu for a year.

I don’t think you’re making the point you think you are. Is it not exploitation if the people involved are wealthy enough?