Tag Archives: fertility medicine

January 12, 2011 · 12:48 am

Egg Donors and The Human Cost of IVF

“Melissa” is a college student, blonde, bright, and beautiful. A high achiever with a soft spot for other people’s troubles, she heads back to her Ivy League campus this week. First stop: the financial aid office to sign loan documents to secure this pricey education and coveted degree.

She’s exactly the type of young woman targeted by egg donor agencies, desperate couples, and fertility clinics. They want her eggs. Badly. And they know how to find her.

Using Craigslist.com, flyers posted in coffee shops and fitness centers, and ads in university newspapers, egg “recruiters” find young women to meet the exploding demand for human eggs. Roughly one in seven couples now suffers from infertility. Delayed childbearing and rampant sexually transmitted infections mean that many would-be moms have eggs too old or organs too damaged to support conception. So donor eggs are a hot commodity. (Indeed, many fertility clinics report more success with donor-egg IVF than IVF using a woman’s own eggs.)

The scientific clamor for embryonic stem cell research also drives the demand for more eggs. New York, for example, allows payments for donor eggs intended for stem cell research. Ethicists worry that payments for research-bound eggs may induce women whose eggs won’t pass muster at fertility clinics to donate eggs without fully realizing the risks involved.

Egg donation carries serious risks, no matter whether the eggs end up in a research scientist’s lab or an infertility clinic’s freezer.

Eggsploitation, a powerful, disturbing documentary, tells the heart-wrenching stories of egg donors who suffered devastating consequences, including lost fertility, serious disability, and near death.  This award-winning film sends a critical warning to young women thinking about donating their eggs: Don’t.

The film triggered my own search of infertility-related websites to analyze the messages aimed at prospective donors–young women like Melissa. Rife with competing interests, this results-driven industry offers few protections for the person most vulnerable to exploitation—the young woman who sells her eggs.

“It’s Not About Money. Really.”

The fertility industry targets young women with an altruistic narrative: The “fulfillment from helping an infertile couple achieve the dream of having a baby is priceless.”  Recruiters flatter their donors, telling them they are indispensable (“women [can’t] realize their dreams of having a family…without you, the egg donor”) and validate their worth with an $8,000 check. Others “guilt” women into donating, telling them they represent an infertile couple’s last hope (“Without egg donors like you, couples… struggling to start a family would have little hope”).

Egg donation is portrayed as “one of the most powerful and rewarding decisions a woman can make.”

It’s a convenient myth. Coating the raw financial deal with the emotional gloss of altruism helps both would-be parents and egg donors feel better about the process—and themselves.

Lift the veil of altruism, however, and reality looks very different. If women weren’t paid, very few would donate eggs.  Countries that forbid or limit payment to egg donors can’t find enough donors to meet the demand. Women themselves admit that money matters: less than a third of donors claim their only motive was altruistic (e.g. to give infertile couples a baby). Nearly 60% say money motivated their decision, at least in part (18.8% say money was their only motive). Surely many egg donors are sincere and compassionate, but the industry would shrivel up without cash incentives to keep the pipeline flowing with donor eggs.

 

Exploitation

Paying healthy young women to undergo a medical procedure with significant risks and no personal benefit exploits them—especially when the sums paid are large and the risks poorly studied and ill communicated.  And that’s the case with egg donation.

Donors are typically students, like Melissa, or women with entry-level jobs. Dangle $8000-$10,000, per monthly cycle, in front of a cash-strapped college student or a barista struggling to live in an expensive city and you’ve got donors. It’s an effective incentive. (One agency even promises $50,000 to $100,000 to egg donors who meet stringent, personalized search criteria.) Students discover that they can easily cover tuition of $50,000 by becoming a repeat donor. The unofficial limit is six cycles, but money entices some women to exceed that limit.

The Risks

No one really knows how egg donation affects a young woman’s future health and fertility. Small studies and scattered donor reports suggest links between fertility drugs and cancer, infertility, and other health problems. In the U.S, no one tracks complications or long-term health risks for egg donors. Most egg donors are anonymous (no registry) and receive no follow-up care once the donation cycle ends.

Industry players also routinely minimize the known risks. One of the few studies of past donors found that 20% did not recall being informed of any risks. Although 12.5% of past donors reported experiencing ovarian hyper-stimulation (a serious, potentially fatal, complication), donor agencies and fertility centers downplay the risk as “rare,” or present in “1-2% of patients,” or as a “5% chance in any cycle.” And prospective donors who wonder whether egg donation might affect their future fertility are flatly misled: “Donating eggs will not harm your future fertility.”

The industry has a collective self-interest in not researching the long-term risks of egg donation, lest they scare women from donating just as demand skyrockets.

The Human Cost

The fertility industry exploits women by soft-pedaling the potential risks of egg donation while offering quick payoffs. But more appalling is the silence surrounding the human costs of IVF itself.

Donor agencies and fertility clinics erect deliberate smokescreens, obscuring what egg donors see of the baby-making process. They promote a mental image of the “results,” captured in happy photos of cherubic babies and ecstatic parents.

But this rosy picture of smiling babies and happy endings is one of the cruelest deceptions in egg donor recruitment. Agencies and fertility centers never give prospective donors a realistic picture of the human costs accompanying egg retrieval, fertilization, cultivation, storage, and implantation; at best they describe the processes in euphemisms, downplaying the loss of life.

What’s at stake is not whether the donor’s pain and effort are worth it, given the human cost; the real question is whether egg donors even see the moral implications of the process they set in motion.

Consider:

  • Some of the lives created from donor eggs are deliberately thrown away after fertilization–graded and disposed of as subpar.
  • Implanted safely, an embryo may be “selectively reduced” (aborted) to avoid multiple births;
  • Implanted, an embryo may die in utero (up to 20% of successful clinical pregnancies eventually miscarry);
  • Frozen, extra embryos may languish for years in steel receptacles, labeled by number and expiration date;
  • Frozen, then finally invited to join the family, embryos may perish in the thawing process;
  • Frozen, forgotten, or rejected by the intended recipients, remaining embryos are destroyed;
  • Finally, years later, the resulting children may long desperately but hopelessly to know their biological mom, the egg donor;
  • And, the CDC warns, IVF children are two to four times more likely to suffer birth defects.

At each stage in this ‘manufacturing’ process, the human embryo is no less a person than the egg donor herself. The Church insists that embryos be treated with the same dignity and respect owed to the doctor wielding the pipette, the egg donor herself, or the would-be-mother anxiously hoping the embryo transfer “takes.”

But each stage of the in vitro fertilization process–which claims to give the gift of life–is potentially murderous; each juncture requires decisions likely to end in the deliberate destruction of human embryos, made in God’s image. The egg donor’s “gift” sets in motion a death-dealing process, masquerading as “the gift of life.”

The fertility industry doesn’t want young women like Melissa to see the reality behind the feel-good image. Donors are primed, eager to believe that their eggs likely gave another woman “the happiness of … a baby.”

I have to wonder…would Melissa’s peers donate their eggs so willingly if they realized the cherished baby is but the lone survivor atop a tragic pyramid of dead siblings?

© 2011 Mary Rice Hasson

For more on IVF see this post:  Selfish Parents: Embryos on Ice

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Filed under Abortion, Catholicism, Children, Family, Fertility and Infertility, Lessons Learned, Moms and Motherhood, Parenting, Policy and Culture, Sexuality, Women

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July 8, 2010 · 10:07 pm

Selfish Parents: Embryos on Ice and Utilitarian IVF

Meet Gillian St. Lawrence, a new breed of IVF mother: fertile utilitarian.

She’s blonde, 30, married for nine years to a nice guy named Paul, and she heads a real estate investment firm in tony Georgetown, Washington, D.C.

Unlike other women who pursue in vitro fertilization, Gillian is blessed with fertility, inconveniently so.  Writing in The Washington Post, Gillian recounts how she and Paul want to be parents. Maybe.  Someday.

But definitely not now, at 30 and 32.

A child might disrupt their carefully laid plans, which include career, money, and planning to be perfect parents: “My husband wants to be able to coach little league, and we both want very reduced work hours so we never have to look at day care or a nanny…[We] just want to give a future child every bit of our time that we can without dealing with financial stress…” (Um, you forgot to mention winning the lottery, and sailing the globe without a care in the world. Wake up, Gillian, and shake the dreamy visions from your eyes.)

Sadly, unrealistic expectations are the least of her problems.

Gillian anticipates another 10 or 15 years before they will have enough time and money to make room in their lives for a child. That perfect timing, however, has one flaw: infertility increases with age and, as Gillian explains, they risk “higher miscarriage and genetic disorder rates… in babies conceived from parents older than 35.” (Translation: We’ve got exacting standards: an imperfect baby won’t pass muster.)

So what’s a young, naturally fertile couple to do? Change their plans and embrace reality? Buy a minivan instead of a Lexus, eat burgers not shrimp, stay home, and hey, here’s an idea…go make passionate love and thrill each other with the awe and mystery of creating a new life together?

Nah, too pedestrian. Gillian crafted an innovative solution, now complete with explanatory website (is a consulting business far behind?) and carefully totaled expenses and records of 15-minute office visits. She and Paul spent a year and roughly $20,000 to “create embryos, freeze them and, essentially, donate them to our future selves“ through in vitro fertilization, as “insurance against future infertility.” Gillian calls it “Preservation IVF.” (Pardon my skepticism…but for a couple cramped for time and money, that’s a rather pricey solution, compared to a good bottle of wine and a romantic night together.)

Their IVF purchase, which their website bills as “Freedom From Our Fertility Clocks,” buys them the ability to “pursue our goals without giving up the chance to be parents.”

Having their babies and freezing them too.

Let’s be clear.  Gillian and Paul are parents already. They created five little embryos and put them on ice for the next 10-15 years, until Gillian is “ready.” (Imagine the convenience: Freeze-dried children, ready when you’re ready. Defrost, implant, and presto, instant children.)  It kind of reminds me of the compulsive shopper who buys five pairs of winter boots in summertime so she can put them on the shelf for later, “just in case” they fit her fashion whims later on.

Only we’re not talking about shoes here.  We’re talking about real people.  Children, however tiny.

I’ll let more knowledgeable voices address the morality of in vitro fertilization, whether to remedy infertility or preserve “all options,” as in Gillian’s case.

But as a parent, I find Gillian’s story appalling. In spite her meticulous plans and growing bank account, she’s running a catastrophic deficit in the three “must haves”  of good parenting.

First, love. In her pages of analytical discussion about wanting a child and the painstaking research to find the “best” way to make one, she never mentions the word “love.” Not even once. She betrays no awareness of the spousal love factor –that when a husband and wife love deeply, their love yearns to create, to expand and express itself in the creation of another person who becomes a unique reflection of their union.

In this, Gillian’s probably not alone. Scientists predict more couples will join her in severing love from baby-making as they pursue a highly desirable commodity–the perfect child.  A recent report on technological advances in IVF says that, within ten years, some couples will forego the natural context of lovemaking because the quality control features of IVF technology will eclipse the results of natural conception.

IVF, and selective embryo destruction, may eventually yield a better product, (i.e. child), than loving conception, but at what cost to our humanity? At what cost to love?

Fast forward to the future, and Gillian’s love void becomes even more tragic.  She seems tone deaf to a child’s deepest needs—for love, unconditional, unlimited love, regardless of parents’ naturally finite supply of time and money.  In addition, Gillian gives no hint that she anticipates the joy of love, which delights in another’s growth, fulfillment, and flourishing. I suspect she will be too busy measuring her personal return on their joint parenting investment.

Which brings me to the second essential of good parenting: sacrifice. Gillian, being a mom is not all about you.  Good parents, like good spouses, put the needs of others first. They want what is good for the other and will sacrifice their own desires—even their own needs (sleep comes to mind)—in order to provide that.

Parenthood teaches us that life does not revolve around our wants. Rich fulfillment grows when we sacrifice and give to our loved ones. It’s a hard lesson, learned reluctantly, and requiring daily practice.  For the next ten or fifteen years, however, Gillian will ingrain the habit of putting herself first as she elevates her personal goals—career ambition, wealth, fitness, fun–over the children she’s already created and who languish, frozen, waiting for their mother’s heart to thaw.

Her careful planning betrays a stingy disposition, measuring out servings of attention and money according to her own selfish inclinations rather than others’ needs. Pity the poor child who arrives needing more attention, sacrifice, and effort than Gillian and Paul plan to give. After decades spent hoarding the best of their time, energy, focus, and money for themselves, Gillian and Paul will be poorly positioned to learn generosity and true self-giving in the face of a child’s unpredictable and inconvenient needs.

The third vital factor that’s missing is this: a good parent welcomes each child as a gift, a person with an inherent value and dignity, regardless of usefulness, talents, eventual achievements, convenience, or lovability.

Utilitarianism lurks beneath the surface as Gillian discusses her expectations of parenthood. Embryos—children—are a means to an end, helping to secure an idealized vision of parenthood for the real stars of the show: the parents. They will enjoy plenty of time, money, and energy, and a perfect child who will eventually achieve great things and send reflected glory their way, with little or no parental sacrifice required.

But Gillian’s utilitiarian mindset really breaks out into the open when a reader asks her what she intends to do with any “leftover” embryos who are not implanted in her womb. Although they created five children, Gillian and Paul intend single embryo transfer sometime after age 40, meaning they’ll try one at a time. In typical IVF, remaining embryos are destroyed when their expiration date arrives. Not so for Gillian.

Those leftover children can still benefit her: “Statistically, with five embryos, we may only be able to achieve one or two successful pregnancies so it is likely we will use them all. If not, we plan to save them because with advanced technology, 20 or 30 years from now one of us could get a bad disease and those embryos could save one of our lives because of the DNA being from us.”

Using your own children for spare parts. Cold-hearted. Chilling.

But fitting, I suppose, for a utilitarian mama who puts her kids on ice.

(c) 2010 Mary Rice Hasson

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