Egg Donation - Preferences

[Shearebel]

NC for the obvious. I am considering donating my eggs, but I do not want them to be used with a surrogate - I want them for a mother who intends to carry and raise her own child. I have done some research and it is not clear to me if I am allowed to raise this preference. Does anyone know if you are able to retain this kind of control over your eggs post-donation?

No you can't.
Just like when you donate blood you have no say how or by whom its used once the donation is made.
Basically you will know nothing about who uses your eggs until you are contacted by your biological offspring after they turn 18

That’s not quite true. You can specify recipients.

I don't believe you can choose OP.
Because...discrimination.

Here's a blog that explains.

stopsurrogacynowuk.org/2021/08/20/egg-donation-and-surrogacy-guest-post-from-kat-howard-radfem_kath-short-read/

A family member donated eggs. It was made quite clear that the donation is without strings, i.e. you cannot dictate under what circumstances are used, same as blood/organ donation.

It is so different from organ or blood donation though. Organ and blood donations save lives. Including lives of people you'd politically disagree with.

Egg donation gives the potential to create a life were previously there was no potential. Even to women you'd politically disagree with.

Egg donation through surrogacy - regardless of the sex of the "intended" parents - gives the potential to create a life knowing that if the life is created, it will experience a trauma straight away. A trauma that by definition will be dismissed by the "intended" parents because if they understood the nature of the trauma they wouldn't be going ahead with surrogacy.

Knowingly causing trauma to a baby seems a whole jump on from saving somebody's life.

Withholding eggs from surrogacy "discriminates against gay couples" as much as me donating blood discrimates against those of a different blood group who cannot receive it. Unless women are viewed as a service class that men have entitlement to use.

That blog is really interesting.
OP do you mind if I ask if you have kids already? I guess I'm interested as to how attitudes to egg donation change (or not) depending on this.

When I donated I was asked if I had any objections to my eggs being donated to same sex couples and smokers and a few other things. I don't recall surrogacy being one of the questions but I reckon you could specify that preference.

This isn't true. You can ask and they can give limited information. I know mine have been donated to a hetero couple. I was contacted and asked to come in for another genetic test as the male partner was a carried of a recessive disease. I was also given the option not to allow donation to them.

They will also tell you how many families your eggs have helped create if any, and whether the babies born were boys or girls and the year they were born. If you have any eggs or embryos in storage.

Why are you considering donating OP?
Just curious as to why it is something you are contemplating when you do not agree with certain aspects of possible use of your eggs?
You don't say whether you have children yourself, are planning egg freezing, or are undergoing IVF and being given an incentive to donate, or are considering this as an altruistic de novo donation. Obviously you don't owe a random internet forum any explanation but your current situation might make a difference to how you feel in the future about a donation

I would suggest that if you are in any doubt, do not freely give your genetic material (gamete donation) into a situation where you do not have control over how it might be used.
Think about how you might feel about having biological offspring that you have no contact with and not be involved in the conception, development and circumstances of their birth. It may be an altruistic donation and allow the recipients of the eggs to bear a child (to raise or as a surrogate pregnancy for someone else) but unlike blood and organ donation, this altruism does not save lives, it simply creates them, and as a previous poster has said, may create problems for them as well.
Considering the topic I opted not to donate eggs as I would find it difficult knowing I had genetic children with fathers I had never met, or that my eggs were used to create a higher risk pregnancy in someone else, As well as this , the idea that if I perhaps did not manage to have my own children as hoped, it would be hard knowing that I had undergone egg harvesting for the benefit of others, to the potential detriment of my own fertility. As well as this, though it is described as an altruistic act I realized would feel responsible for the children born of any donation I made, as my choices would have led to their situations in life, and I would feel guilty if they were born into difficult and sub optimal situations

I feel the same way as @RavingStone and @SamuelDJackson. I have such a strong sense of ethical foreboding in the idea of donating eggs. I think it is based on my experience of at least 2 adopted members of my family who have found not knowing their biological parents traumatic in a way that carried into their entire adult lives. There are so many considerations that I think on balance it isn't an ethical thing to do. You might be "helping" at one stage of the process of a life creation, but the chain of events this initiates can be long. I really do think kids need their parents.

Thanks everyone for the interesting viewpoints. This is something that has crossed my mind a few times since having my first child (I have two under 4, and my family is complete, for those interested). It comes from seeing people - in real life and online - struggling with fertility and feeling deeply affected by the idea of a woman struggling with something she so desperately wants. So I suppose it’s an altruistic ideal. However, I struggle with the ethics of surrogacy for reasons mentioned - nothing to do with same sex couples (ie I would be happy with a lesbian couple) but obviously it does exclude gay men.

For me one of the issues with assisted fertility is the placing of the wishes of the would be parent over the well being of prospective child. I know there are many people who would make wonderful parents who can't conceive or have kids. But there are other ways of directing the nurturing instinct. I know the urge to procreate is strong. But I don't think it is a right. It is a privilege and a responsibility. Yes I know that sounds conservative. When it comes to child care and safeguarding I find I am very much that way inclined. (Not so in other views).

When I was young I gave very little thought to the issues of biological vs (not) relations, and if I thought about it at all, thought vaguely how nice people were to help childless couples have children.

Time passes though.

My perspective got wider. I saw friends, so many friends, searching for years for the absent biological mothers and fathers, the people who might or might not be nice, who might or might not want to know them, but who would be as like them genetically as anyone could be short of a twin. Where did I come from? The blanks in the family tree.
I've seen the distress when the parents don't want to know. Or they do, but, the relationship will never be the same as the kids they had and kept and raised.

I saw stepkids and adopted kids growing up as cuckoos in the nest, loved, but not really understood.

I saw friends looking back and realising why the person they thought was a parent treated them so differently, never seemed to like them.

And nowadays I find it hard to see how gamete donation can be reconciled with the principle of putting the child's interest first at all times.

Do I think I know everything? No. Do I campaign against surrogacy, or say anything to people using donor gametes, or otherwise stick my beak in, again no. I'm just one person with a view, that changed. Genes matter.

Hi @Shearebel . I’m a mother to two children through egg donation. I’m a carrier of a genetic disease but I didn’t know that when we started out; we only found out after two pregnancies went wrong due to malformations of the baby. We tried using my own eggs via IVf where they are screened (PGD) but that didn’t work. So I looked into egg donation. It turned out I didn’t find it easy to get pregnant through IVF even with donated eggs, but 10 years in we have one child and four years after her we were successful with another. I want to take my hat off to you for considering egg donation. When I start looking in 2015 there weren’t many donors at all. Thank you for thinking of donating. I don’t know the rules around what T&Cs you can put on who gets your eggs, but I would approach an agency such as Altrui as they can match you and hopefully give you more info/control vs going through an egg bank. Definitely have any counselling on offer to discuss the ramifications of your potential decision as it’s a serious process. For what it’s worth I did ED in the UK as I did want any children to be able to get donor information at 18, which is the law here. As many posters have mentioned, not knowing your genetic routes is very upsetting for some people, so having a route which answers the questions quickly & early is almost certainly preferable. Good luck with whatever you decide.

https://www.altrui.co.uk/how-does-matching-work-in-11-egg-donation/

You have no choice who your future offspring would go to. And just because it's a mother with her own body doesn't mean she's guaranteed to be a good person. You also risk your own fertility and reproductive health. There's very little research on long-term health effects for women undergoing ovary stimulation and egg retrieval. I would think hard why you are doing this and if you still feel strongly about it, wait until after you've had children of your own.

Just because someone is struggling with infertility doesn't mean you give them your child. Think about the children in these situations. We Are Donor Conceived is a group that shared stories of donor conceived adults.

I think it is hard to predict how things turn out. I know someone who was adopted, desperately wanted to meet biological mother. She did and it wasn't what she expected and she cut all contact with her. I know someone else born from sperm donation, went through lots of upset as a teenager and young adult, wanted donation banned, wanted to meet the donor but never found him. She got married, had kids and decided it didn't matter. I think her issue was she had a difficult relationship with her father so wanted to replace him with the biological one.

They both ended up OK. Life's complicated isn't it.

It’s very kind of you to consider this OP but please look very carefully into the potential health implications. I say this as a childless infertile woman who wouldn’t want another woman to put their health on the line for me.

Google altrui egg donation. You get matched with someone you are happy with. I feel exactly the same as you op!

Altrui target students. This dropped into my daughter's Instagram.
I appreciate why someone might need donated eggs and am happy for mb2512cat leave students alone.

Young women should not be being coached to be kind and generous, sharing their body to the detriment of their own health.

@FannyCann I did not know they did that! Dodgy and has put me off them.

I started paying attention to the ethics of egg donation when my 15 DD got these ads after researching colleges. It's eugenics when they seek smart, pretty, blonde, green or blue-eyed young white woman, isn't it? In parts of Asia, you can request a specific nationality. Japanese young women are higher prized than Cambodian. OP already has kids, so not the same thing, but trusting that the agencies care about your wellbeing is naive. They give all the rights to the commissioning parents who have all the control. The purchasers can pick the donor, the donor can't pick the families. The agencies take a cut and only care about delivering the product, not the health of the donor.

Think long and hard about the side effects of the hormones and fertility medication on your body

I wanted to do this but the risk of OHSS has put me off

Really exploitative industry.

This film is a real eye opener...