BBC Scotland recruiting young women as egg donors

[ArabellaScott]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1jwdg5y8kpo

Chilling.

There’s a bit of ‘How to show you’re a lovely girl’ going on in the messaging isn’t there?

Just volunteer, give blood or be generally nice to people until you have completed your own family and are 100% sure about egg donation - you don’t have to risk your own future fertility and peace of mind to show how generous you are!

It's more like an advertisement than a piece of serious journalism. It doesn't look at the ethical issues at all. It is as if passing over your dna to strangers to raise has no implications and of course it does.

It is not so straightforward to raise a child who is not biologically yours, and I say that as an adopter. At least with adoption, no parent has a bio connection to the child. With donor eggs the mother has no connection but the father probably does - this is not always easy. There was a mumsnet thread recently from a woman whose husband says he doesn't love their son (born from sperm donation).

But articles like this suggest that dna doesn't matter. How does this young woman know her biological child will be well cared for in the new family? She has signed all rights away. The child won't know who she is until they are 16 or 18. It is playing with fire imo.

Carrying and giving birth to a child is a far greater connection than DNA alone. My daughter was conceived from a donor egg and as far as I'm concerned she's more mine than my husband's, I literally made her. I grew her in my body and gave her life, I turned her form an embryo into a real, fully formed person. Of course she's both of our but in my mind it's 51/49 skewed to me. So what if she's not made from my DNA? That doesn't mean she's not mine or not related to me.

Women who have donor egg babies are still classed as the babies biological mother because the baby shares the gestational mother's immune system, blood and epigenetics.

Risk of the baby having Down’s syndrome is higher with donated eggs. I’m not sure about other risks but I would imagine this is not the only one.

In the US women are paid for this. I don’t understand why anyone would do it for free unless it was for a loved one.

I have two beautiful sons because two strangers donated sperm to a bank for no reason but to be kind. I had my children late and was too old to donate my eggs after. If I hadnt been I would have done so. I underwent 3 rounds of IVF so appreciate the discomfort and risks. I would also have had some qualms about my eggs becoming a child raised by another and someone making money from this but without somone else potentially overcoming similar qualms I wouldn’t have my children, giving this gift to another would have felt right for me.

That's a lovely sentiment.

I don't think you're the target audience for the article (advert) though. You knew what would be involved.

Deaths have been reported as a result of OHSS but you are 10 times more likely to die following natural childbirth than from donating eggs

Very odd comparison.

https://www.gov.uk/legal-rights-for-egg-and-sperm-donors

'If you use an unlicensed clinic to donate sperm, you will be the legal father of any child born from your donation under UK law.'

'If you give birth to a child, you’re always considered the legal mother in UK law even when using a donated egg.'

I looked this up before and forgot to post it.

The problem is that it’s not really about when things go well - a baby is born and everyone is happy. Is it that simple?

Because, with reproductive technology, the ramifications of things going wrong are so severe that they need serious consideration at the legislative and regulatory stage.

Also where is the end point at which the success or happy outcome of a donation is judged? Is it when the baby is born? Is it when the donor has successfully completed her own family? Is it when the baby grows up and does or doesn’t seek contact as an adult? Is it when they begin to consider the genetic inheritance of their own children?

I am not saying that it shouldn’t happen (I considered doing it myself, as per my first post, but I thank my lucky stars that I never pursued it!) but I am saying that gamete donation is a weighty undertaking as the consequences might only be felt years or decades from now. And very young people, I would suggest, are less able to make those imaginative leaps or fully grasp the significance of what they are doing.

I have watched a friend go through multiple rounds of egg harvesting and it's horrific. The toll it takes on the female body is significant. Add to that the psychological cost. Anyone who thinks this is a reasonable ask from any healthy young (or not so young) woman in the name of "be kind" needs locking up.