The sort of feminism where rich women walk over poor women. Times article on egg 'donation'

[Forwarder]

The Times is quite fond of human body parts for sale stories. Here's one where a woman in her late 40s can't get pregnant (shock!)

So she has to buy a younger woman's eggs. But :-( that's pricey.

The woman's own sister is too busy to be an egg donor. So it's contracted out to a lesser female.

Or have I got this wrong? If the sexes were reversed then the 40 something man would be gaily starting a new family with 30 yo woman. Is this a win for equality?

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/238e675a-e2b4-42e3-8bc1-bd6d46403093?shareToken=9579efa3a218abf8dabc9fb74b22a5c3

Twenty years ago, in a new relationship, it was suggested by my GP that I tried 'Gift' - egg donation to have a child with my new DH. We declined in the end. I felt that the child would not be mine, that it was the opposite of having my own child. The ethical consideration I did not take into account, and for a while I was sad that I would have no more children. I am glad I refused even though my thoughts about such a child now are that it would have been mine for I would have made it with my body. But still, no I refused. (Egg donation was done in the eighties and nineties as part of fertility treatment and I remember well a woman who had it leaving the hospital ward where I was recovering from another miscarriage - not a ward arrangement that was sensitive to anyone.)

It may not be coercive to donate on the embryos but assuming she used a donor, the eggs aren't your daughters. In order to get those eggs she and her dh have put a woman's life and health at risk. There are no longitudinal studies done on donors, presumably because it is a very lucrative business but there are indications of long term health risks https://www.publichealthpost.org/viewpoints/egg-donation-risk-and-reward/

The risk of developing OHSS, which can be fatal, is significantly higher for younger women, which most donors are.

Personally, I think availing of donor eggs or surrogacy is nothing short of exploitation and both should be banned.

The only donor eggs/embryos allowed should be those of women undergoing IVF who produce surplus eggs themselves.

@JustanotherMNSlapperTwat

Not to be a dick, but the definition of a family is

”a group of one or more parents and their children living together as a unit.”

Two adults without children are a “Couple”.

This shouldn’t be upsetting, it’s just what the words mean.

Selfish self-centered cow

other dictionary definitions include

a group of people related by blood or marriage.

all the descendants of a common ancestor

a group of people who are related to each other, such as a mother, a father, and their children:

a group of people who care about each other because they have a close relationship or shared interests

a social group of parents, children, and sometimes grandparents, uncles, aunts, and others who are related

I feel sorry for your children, if you have them, if you genuinely no longer consider them family once they move out. And your husband or wife if you have one who will cease to be family once your children move out. And your parents, who apparently ceased to be family the moment you "left the unit"

But thank you for claiming my mother, father, siblings, nieces and nephew can't possibly be my family because I'm infertile.

Interestingly the first definition I quoted was the second definition of family that the Oxford dictionary gave. The first definition, word for word, being yours. Which kind of looks like you cherry picked one of the definitions it gives to prove your point and blatantly ignored the rest that disproved your point

If you dont want to be a dick don't be a dick.

I see as this:

Adoption finds a family for a child who has none or whose family cannot raise them. It's not ideal to lose your birth family but it's the best thing in these circumstances to find a loving family for a child who needs one as opposed to ever changing foster homes or orphanages. In ethical adoptions parents are counseled and adoptive parents are encouraged to help their child cope with this loss or attempt some contact if appropriate (unethical adoption does exist, sadly. For example, in the states infant adoption has had its problems where at times it's akin to coercing young women to give up their babies and buying their babies and cutting children off from their native cultures).

Surrogacy and egg buying creates this loss of birth family ON PURPOSE. It creates a separation from a birth mother (not necessarily genetic mother) ON PURPOSE. It ignores the fact that these children have genetic parents and extended family who they are rarely encouraged to know of or have contact with. It pays a woman to risk her life to birth a child who she will never know.

What I'm slightly boggling at in some of these replies is the complete denial of agency or purpose to women who choose to donate their eggs, with or without financial incentive. If a woman chooses to donate her eggs, the person who uses them is not putting that woman's health at risk because donation was the donor's choice to make. If the donor didn't make that choice, there would be no egg to use.

Your personal ethics may say that you would not make that choice or use that process and that is your right, but it doesn't mean that somebody else's choice to do it is a coerced one. Many women choose to do this in order to offset the cost of their own IVF and the procedure is done as part of that treatment - so should they go through the treatment they were going to have anyway and not donate any eggs they will not use?

Do we consider that nobody should join the military or the fire brigade because they put their lives at risk and get paid for it? Do you refuse to read the news because 73 journalists who chose to go and do their job there have been killed in Gaza since October 6th? Would you deny other people the option to exercise their agency over their own lives and bodies because of that?

Using donor eggs is not the same as surrogacy. It creates children who would not otherwise have existed and who are given birth to and raised by the woman who carried them.

So the person who pays for a kidney from someone who sold it due to dire financial need is not in any way responsible for them putting their life and health at risk?

The person using cocaine/heroin/other drugs is not in any way responsible for the person whose health is ruined working in a drug processing factory?

Complete nonsense. Creating a market for kidneys, eggs, drugs is what leads to the damage to the vulnerable individuals exploited by the companies involved. The customer is just as much exploiting the victim as everyone else in the food chain.

And no, using donor eggs is not the same as surrogacy. It is simply a different form of exploitation, one that is also frequently part of the surrogacy process too.

What is really worrying is how little they bave researched the link to cancer:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/10/well/live/are-there-long-term-risks-to-egg-donors.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
I almost donated some time back(I thought I may as well help some-one as I wasn't using my eggs) . They told me nothing about the risks. I’m glad I backed out.

Where do you draw the line then? I have friends who are vegan because of the exploitation of animals. I have friends who are vegetarian because of the risks to life and health of people in the meat-packing industry. Should we all do that and are we all unethical if we don't? Do you refuse to call the fire brigade if your house is on fire because of the risk to life and health of firemen?

There is almost no choice you can make that doesn't involve the use of someone else's labour, and that comes with measurable risks to their lives and health. During Covid, would you have refused medical treatment because of the risk to the person choosing to provide it? People working in construction or on trawlers run high risks of injury or death. Do you refuse to live in a building or eat fish?

People's personal ethical choices are theirs to make within legal limits.

It's not just risk. It's sexism and misogyny that commodifies women and involves an unequal balance of power to do that.

Without firefighters, people would die. Ditto organ donation, Search and Rescue teams, etc.

No one dies if they don't have a baby.

Even altruistic egg donation has significant risks. Relationships change in ways that you might not be able to predict. Having easily conceived my DC, I considered donating eggs so that a much-loved sibling could extend their family. I did some initial research but didn’t go any further, thank goodness.

Less than a decade later our relationship is barely recognisable: religious differences, diverging lifestyles and infertility have driven a wedge between us. I am so relieved that I never ventured down that road.

@Delphinium20 No one dies if they don't have a baby.

No one dies if they don't eat meat or fish.

I don't understand the connection you're making. Not that I agree or disagree, I just don't get it.

The straw man of veganism vs making a human being. It's just wild.

@Delphinium20 - Your point as I understood it was that it is unethical to donate eggs or to use donor eggs because nobody dies if they don't have a baby, but that it is ethical to use the services of people like firemen who risk their lives and health in their work because that involves a risk to somebody else's life.

I'm merely pointing out that all labour is in some way exploitative and that there is a measurable risk to the life and health of people working in the meat and fish industries but nobody dies if they don't eat meat or fish, and yet most people don't think it is unethical to do those things.

Do you think people should not be able to work in those industries for the financial incentive of pay because other people pay for their products?

www.osha.gov/meatpacking/hazards-solutions#:~:text=Of%20particular%20concern%20are%20exposures,meat%20and%20poultry%20processing%20workers.

www.vbattorneys.com/blog/the-high-risks-associated-with-working-in-the-fishing-industry

@DrJump - I'm not making a direct comparison. I'm trying to explore why people think some forms of a person's agency are ethical and permissible and others aren't , and why they choose to draw the line at egg donation. The argument around surrogacy is one I understand because there is a third party - the baby - involved. But eggs and embryos aren't babies unless you're of the anti-choice perspective.

Middle class white women have co-opted feminism and gatekeep it from any other women. If anyone talks to them about inter-sectionality they claim that this is anti-feminist and we're all in together. We're not - we might all be in the same storm of patriarchy but we are in very different boats and for some women only the experience on their boat is deemed valid (even though their experience places them very much in a patriarchy-adjacent position).

Also, what about the child? The breaking of the morher-baby bond at birth is hugely detrimental and has long-term affects.

They are partly her biological children and partly the donors. They would not be the same child as had they been carried in the donor's body given the birth mother's influence on genetic expression.

Oh, I hear you now, @Britinme

I agree with you that many of our jobs put most of us at some risk to our lives and health (from sedentary office work to nurses exposed to pathogens, teachers at risk from violent behavior, etc.). I can see that people working in deep-sea fishing might be at weather-related risk depending on who they work for and the vagaries of the ocean, but I am not aware of meat-raising being especially risky to employees vs. non-meat factory employees (I suppose cowboys have riskier jobs than people who work in offices, but they also may have lower diabetes/heart health issues as a result). Obviously all industries should be required to reduce risk to their employees as much as possible. I'd argue that many people do need to eat meat and or they can die (but that is likely a debate between vegans and non-vegans and not for our purposes here).

A diverse lot of people have a very grim view of surrogacy regardless of background or religion or politics and I think that is due to the unnaturalness of it in addition to the risks and consent/power balances involved. The mother/baby dyad is such a critical part of humanity; it predates our species as other mammals have come before us. To destroy this on purpose, to risk other women's lives and to sell other women's children to give to those who want them seems an endeavor that there is no allowable risk I can personally stomach. It is elitist, patriarchal and self-serving on the highest order. We humans tend to stomach risks to seafisher folks or firefighters as they bring goods needed to survive and save others' lives. There is nothing redeeming in the selfish demand to use another woman's body for yourself. I apply the same rule to prostitution.

@Britinme I didn't answer you about egg donation. You're right, an egg is not a baby, an embryo is not a baby, both have potential to be one and selling that potential is what concerns me. The goal is to make a baby from them both. But when that baby arrives, it still has a bio family it has been denied. These facts don't go away.

I don't think one thought about my unused eggs that go out w/ my period every month, but I can't fathom thinking that one of them was used to make a baby with a man I know nothing about and was being raised by strangers. I don't understand how anyone could not be impacted by this, knowing you might have a kid out in the world somewhere.

Your thoughts are very similar to mine.

I think that there are going to be women who, having sold eggs in their early 20s whilst trying to financially support themselves through expensive universities, are going to wake up in complete shock with this realisation. They will wake up in a sweat in the middle of the night, and realise that their children might be out there, but they have no idea where they are, who their father ended up being, and who is caring for them now. I wonder if they will ever end up searching for their lost children.

As far as I'm concerned, if you sell your eggs, you may as well sell your baby. People might find that shocking, but that is the entire purpose of the whole enterprise. The whole point is to create a baby that will be sold. It's just that the transaction happens before conception.

Does the possession of (half of) your genetic material make you the mother of a child rather than the person who birthed it and raised it? Do you feel the same way about the donor of the other half of the genetic material?

From my perspective, the mother of the child is the one who birthed and raised it.