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

That's a bit judgey and inflammatory though.

Debating the ethics of donor conception is a good thing, particularly as big business and vulnerable women (donots and recipients) are involved, as well as future children.

There is a growing evidence base - including now from families who have 'told' from an early age. It deserves a better airing and doesn't necessarily support your assertions on a child's needs.

I've told this story on here before, and I think it's relevant to the discussion about egg donation in return for funded IVF. I donated my eggs to another couple in this way through an egg-sharing scheme at a London fertility clinic and found it traumatic.

I'm never sure whether sharing my experiences is the right thing to do because I completely understand the motivations of the couple whose money paid for my IVF in return for my eggs- after all, it was desperation for a baby that drove me to share my eggs in the first place, I wouldn't have considered it otherwise. I also feel tremendous guilt for feeling the way I do because I got my only child out of the process.

The problem with it is that a choice made in those circumstances isn't really a choice freely made. I was given counselling to help me explore whether it was the right choice for us but really, the counselling was heavily weighted towards the positives of donation and assuring me I wouldn't in any way be the mother of any child born from my donation. The counselling was delivered at the clinic, so I assume it wasn't independent. I left feeling utterly convinced that donating my eggs wasn't really a big deal.

Then I discovered after egg collection that they didn't get many eggs, and from that I only got one embryo. I was then facing the reasonably likely circumstance that I wouldn't actually have my own child while someone else would have a child that was biologically related to me. At that point, I started feeling uncomfortable about it, but then I was lucky enough to get pregnant.

It was when I had my DS that I really started to struggle with what I'd done. The idea of donation was one thing, the reality of having my own baby and knowing that there was potentially another one out there somewhere who was biologically related to me in the same way and there was no way fpr me to even know anything about their welfare was profoundly distressing to me. I'd been told by the counsellor that I wouldn't in any way be the mother of a child born from my donation, but that's not how I felt in reality and I just felt this desperation that there might be another of 'my' babies out there and I may never know them (I don't mean by this that I wouldn't consider mothers of babies conceived via donor eggs to be mothers, I was told all about genetic changes happening in the womb etc, but I still felt very unsettled by it).

Eventually, I contacted the clinic and they told me that no children had been born from my donation and I wept with relief. I still feel awful for reacting like that as I know it must have been awful for the couple who didn't conceive, but I couldn't help it. I also respect that there are probably many women who have done the same as me who had positive experiences, but the problem is that you don't necessarily know which camp you'll fall into until it's too late. I'm not sure whether I think gamete donation is ever ethical, but I definitely think that offering money or other incentives clouds whether a choice is freely made.

@shreddednips thank you for sharing that.

I had IVF and have 2 frozen embryos which I cannot use myself. I have given a lot of thought to donating them to a couple and in all honesty it's my first choice. DH is not in board at all and it won't happen. The embryos will be destroyed. I'm trying not to think about that too much as it's quite painful for me.

My IVF was completely free on the NHS. Any donation I made would be for no fee, no coercion, nothing like that. I am concerned by situations where there is a financial incentive or outright payment as that tips the balance significantly.

I don't agree with the comparisons being drawn between egg donors and surrogacy. Commercial surrogacy is an abomination. Altruistic surrogacy is more nuanced to me, but ultimately still removes a child from its mother at birth, for the benefit of the adults involved.

I'm so glad that chapter of my life is behind me. It was said up thread that no one ever died from not having a baby, I'm not entirely convinced on that. My mental health was shot to bits before I had IVF. I was in a very dark hole and couldn't see a way out.

Anyway that's just my own experiences and thoughts. Some of the other thoughts on the thread have been challenging to read but worthwhile to consider. There are some pro-life/pro-choice intersections that are quite finely balanced and challenging ethically, I think.

If there were enough eggs going spare from women having IVF there wouldn't be advertising campaigns aimed at uni students to crack open their ovaries for the greater good. @LondonLass91

With increased life expectancy, serial monogamy and older second or third time round couples forming, a normalised gamete and womb renting market has huge potential for growth. Either we decide on an ethical boundary or wealthy older people ransack the fertility of younger women as a matter of course.

There are some pro-life/pro-choice intersections that are quite finely balanced and challenging ethically, I think.

Until about 5 minutes ago, 'pro-choice'/'reproductive rights' meant women's right to prevent or end a pregnancy - i.e. contraception and abortion. Those things are rights, or should be, because without them women cannot have the kind of bodily integrity that men take for granted.

More and more I am seeing this kind of language used around surrogacy and egg donation as if it's all the same kind of thing. It's not. The right to bodily integrity, to not have your body used by another without your consent is nothing like the supposed 'right' to a child, or the 'right' to use other people's bodies in the pursuit of one.

I think the frustration for me is that I keep hearing the argument "it gives a child a life that they wouldn't otherwise have had" around surrogacy and egg donation. But that argument is literally one of the main arguments used to justify banning abortions.

So for me that's why it's important that if pro life arguments are brought into these conversations that they are challenged. Because if we justify womens choices in one direction by using arguments that reduce womens choices in another direction that will not benefit women.

For me surrogacy and egg donation are not pro-choice they are, as you say, not the same kind of thing at all.

Women are accused of making frivolous decisions in respect of both abortion and assisted conception. Neither are generally entered into without sober reflection and 'choices' are structured by regulatory frameworks. Arguing frameworks should be different is one thing, vilifying individual women is another. A lot of women who endure IVF will have had experiences of pregnancy loss. We are starting to understand the association with this and PTSD. This is an argument for greater protection for recipients as well as donors. Both are vulnerable to big business interests. The attacks on recipients as middle class or making lifestyle choices profoundly misunderstand the experiences of many women.

Thank you for sharing your story @shreddednips

I was also offered the opportunity to share my eggs when I went through IVF but then it turned out my weight was a little over the BMI guidelines (and as it turns out my eggs were poor quality and would have helped no one!)

Before going into IVF I knew that I was against egg donation. After I came out the other side of IVF I knew I was against egg donation.

But in the middle of it? I was on a low income at the time and my choices around how many rounds I could go through were limited by my budget not what I wanted to do. That was set against a backdrop of people urging me to take on more debt because "if you want to be a mother anything is worth it" which made me feel like I didn't want to be a mother enough, I didn't deserve to be a mother enough, if I wasn't willing to put myself through round after round of debt inducing heartbreak.

During all of this I was offered all of half an hours counselling. I was pumped full of drugs so my hormones were all over the place. I was in a wierd state of wanting to hope and not wanting to hope too hard. I had been through multiple tests, some invasive, one incredibly painful, seen multiple doctors. I was tired, I was stressed and I was grieving the multiple miscarriages I had had before the IVF and then the multiple miscarriages I had suffered as a result of the IVF.

And in the midst of all of this if someone had told me I could have spared another woman grief by donating eggs, and given myself the opportunity for more rounds of IVF at the same time I would have grabbed it with both hands even though it goes against my principles.

Because people who are going through high levels of emotional stress and grief and loss and hope and despair do not always make good decisions that will sit right with them for the rest of their lives.

Now some may think that that's on me. That I should have been stronger, that it's my own fault I would have failed my principles, that they would do better. And maybe others would. Maybe this is my failure. But the regulations should take into account women like me. Women who have lost baby after baby after baby, who cannot afford to keep paying to try who are thrown a lifeline if they could just help another woman in this situation.

In what other circumstances would women who had lost multiple babies be expected to live with the knowledge that one of their babies that had lived was out in the world and they couldn't see them.

And yes my brain knows about epigenics and I know it wouldn't be "the same baby" but my heart wouldn't have known it.

The reality is as it stands at the moment the regulations aren't rigorous enough, the counselling and support is not sufficient enough, and the standards aren't high enough. We are failing women, and telling them to "be kind" when they raise the issues.

There are a couple of arguments in the last few posts that I think need to be addressed,

@PencilsInSpace says " The right to bodily integrity, to not have your body used by another without your consent is nothing like the supposed 'right' to a child, or the 'right' to use other people's bodies in the pursuit of one."

There is no right to a child and there is no right to use other people's bodies without their consent. This seems to be arguing that people should not have the right to consent to the use of their bodies where that is legal, which is about as anti-choice as it gets.

@JustanotherMNSlapperTwat says " if we justify womens choices in one direction by using arguments that reduce womens choices in another direction that will not benefit women. "

Please could you outline how you believe that allowing a woman to share her eggs, with or without financial incentives, reduces any other woman's choices in any direction because I'm not seeing that?

I said that specifically in relation to the first part of that particular post.

If we use pro life phrases to justify egg donation then that can make it harder collectively to then argue against those phrases when used to justify banning abortion

If a lot of people are turning around and saying egg donation is fine because it gives life to a child that otherwise wouldn't have one, its much harder then for those people to argue against the pro life argument that banning abortion gives life to children that otherwise wouldn't have one.

Obviously there are other aspects to both arguments that differentiate them. I'm not trying to make it sound like its as simplistic as that

But regardless of that I don't think you can use a classic, well know, pro life argument when trying to argue what you consider to be a pro choice position. Not without considering the impact on other women who may come up against that very same argument in different situations.

What is wrong with egg donation if all concerned are truly consenting?

@JustanotherMNSlapperTwat - I don't think the argument revolves around that regardless of the phrase use. The argument revolves around women having agency and choice about what happens to their bodies. The anti- choice (or pro-life as they prefer to be called) revolves around what they see as the personhood of the forty's, which they see as conflicting with the rights to choice of the woman carrying it.

Foetus not fortys!

I agree I don't think the argument revolves around that. I was responding specifically to a point a poster had raised about pro life/pro choice, which was not meant to imply that I thought that this was the main point of the conversation, apologies if that wasn't clear.

It certainly isn't the main point of the issue for me and I wasn't trying to imply it was the main issue for you or other posters on the opposite side of the debate.

Because people who are going through high levels of emotional stress and grief and loss and hope and despair do not always make good decisions that will sit right with them for the rest of their lives.

Well explained. Desperate people don't make clear-headed decisions and manipulation of desperate people is always unethical.

@JustanotherMNSlapperTwat

@Delphinium20 - do you believe you can always judge another person's emotional state when you don't know them or their circumstances and that you should be able to use that judgement to prevent them from making what you consider to be a bad decision?

Carrying a pregnancy to full term is difficult and potentially dangerous, the equivalent of ageing a woman's body by approximately 7 years. Women still die in childbirth. Childbirth can be traumatic and result in PTSD, not to mention post natal depression, and numerous other physical health issues, some irreversible or long lasting. Surrogacy is grossly dehumanising

By pro-life/pro-choice I wasn't talking about surrogacy or the rights around your body autonomy generally. I was talking about the questions it raises, for me, around the special status we give reproductive matter. People have made comparisons with selling kidneys, selling 3 month old babies etc. That set me thinking about how we differentiate different parts of the body, not just because of their usefulness to us right now, but because of their potential or emotional importance. This is something I've often mulled over, as someone who has created embryos but can't use them.

Sorry if I wasn't clear, I didn't mean choice over our bodies. I had already said in my post that money chages the balance in that 'choice' in a way I'm not happy with. To me it is similar to sex - I do not believe that consent can be bought. It must be given freely.

I was born via surrogate... but from Day One there was no bond with my mother and my childhood was unhappy. That's why I believe so strongly that this cruel and immoral practice should be banned This article was published this morning, by an adult born via surrogacy. She doesn't find the "but babies wouldn't exist without it" argument convincing either.
(I entirely agree with previous posters that it's a pro-life argument, and beyond that, it's an argument that, taken to its logical conclusion, obliges women to do nothing but have babies, regardless of the toll on their health or their ability to feed, house and clothe the children.)

I'm so sorry to hear you've had such a difficult time, and I totally agree with what you say. It sounds like we've had similar experiences When you've experienced losses and grappling with grief and infertility, you don't have the mental or emotional resources to make such a big decision- or at least I didn't.

Maybe some women do, and maybe some people would say I really have no right to complain when I made a choice. Even some more balanced counselling that gave equal weight to the potential downsides- for example, that I may feel that I was the mother of a baby born from my donation and experience grief for them, even if that's not the 'right' way to think about it. Logically, I understood the information about epigenetics, but logic wasn't much of a comfort, especially around such an emotionally loaded thing as having babies.

It would be incredibly helpful if counselling were more widely available.

@JustanotherMNSlapperTwat I think the frustration for me is that I keep hearing the argument "it gives a child a life that they wouldn't otherwise have had" around surrogacy and egg donation. But that argument is literally one of the main arguments used to justify banning abortions.

Yes, I get where you are coming from and I agree. I should perhaps have been clearer (to @NeverStopTwinkling as well) that I was making a more general point about the way these technologies and uses of others' bodies are increasingly being framed as 'reproductive rights', for example:

Issues surrounding assisted reproduction (AR) implicate core human rights—including the rights to health, sexual and reproductive health, decision making about reproductive life (such as if and when to have children), benefit from scientific progress, equality and non-discrimination, and informed consent. To realize these rights, laws and policies should ensure that all people impacted by infertility have access to information and infertility care, including IVF, without discrimination.

https://reproductiverights.org/our-issues/assisted-reproduction/

@Britinme There is no right to a child and there is no right to use other people's bodies without their consent. This seems to be arguing that people should not have the right to consent to the use of their bodies where that is legal, which is about as anti-choice as it gets.

This is a different argument again and reminds me of when people use 'pro-choice' in arguments about prostitution. So we have:

1. The right to bodily integrity (preventing or ending a pregnancy)

1. The right to a baby, or to use others' bodies in pursuit of one

1. The right to do whatever you want with your body / the right to 'consent' to anything*

You are arguing for 1 and 3 to be actual rights, but not 2.

I would argue that 3 is not and should not be a right either. You cannot consent to selling your organs, for example. It could be argued that most kidney transplants are successful and most live kidney donors continue to live normal, healthy lives and can greatly benefit from the money, so as long as the donor consents then what's the problem?

Is it 'anti-choice' to have laws against this? Or can we recognise that allowing people to consent to selling their organs results in a huge international trade that harms poor and vulnerable people, mostly women?

This whole focus on 'choice' and 'consent', to the exclusion of other considerations, is how we ended up with totally useless third-wave choicy-choicy feminism, with the idea that you cannot criticise anything a woman does if it's her 'choice', that as long as a woman 'consents' to [insert horrific practice] then all is fine and dandy and empowerfulising so we shouldn't criticise it.

*I know you said 'the right to consent to the use of their bodies where that is legal' but surely the issue is what should be legal in the first place.

@PencilsInSpace - I was very careful to use the phrase "within the law" so arguments about donating other organs are irrelevant because those are already illegal.

You are arguing for the removal of an existing right. Is your argument based solely on the risks to women involved in egg donation or (if based on what you see as the ethics of gamete donation) do you include sperm donation in that? If it's based on the risks of egg donation, then you're also arguing that women shouldn't have the right to IVF treatment since most existing egg donation is a by-product of women having their own IVF treatment.

I agree that encouraging women who are not in the process of IVF already is undesirable because they are then exposing themselves to the risks involved in egg donation for no other reason than financial (although having said that there are examples of altruistic egg donation, often from siblings and I wonder if you think that is somehow different). However I don't agree that legislating against what women can do with their own eggs obtained under a legal procedure that they are doing anyway for their own benefit should be possible.