Capitalism

About 48 hours after the eggs are gathered and combined with sperm in a petri dish, the “intended mother” is inseminated with 3 to 4 embryos. Within 2 to 3 weeks she will know if she is pregnant, a victory claimed by 25 to 35 percent of In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) patients. Despite this relatively low rate of success, one in five multiple births is attributed to IVF. The process will cost the “intended mom” between $15,000 and $25,000. 

Meanwhile, the egg recipient, like the donor, has been pumped full of hormones to increase her receptivity to implantation. Numerous side effects are likely to ensue, including hot flashes, headaches, irritability, joint pain, and breast swelling. 

Beyond the not insignificant physical risks of egg donation, retrieval, and implantation lie other concerns. Among the most controversial: the issue of “designer babies,” infants intended to bear the physical and intellectual characteristics most revered by Americans. 

Barbara Katz Rothman, sociology professor and author of The Book of life: A Personal and Ethical Guide to Race, Normality and the Implications of the Human Genome Project, is horrified by what she sees as the resurgence of eugenics and by the classism implicit in fertility marketing. “In a system of donating gametes in which banking is the dominant metaphor, sperm and eggs are naturally sorted by ‘worth.’ That forces us to confront the question of what makes for worth in human beings. We don’t like to speak about eugenics anymore, but it is hard not to think of eugenics when people are actively seeking the very best genes money can buy,” she says. 

Tali Amit, a 21-year-old senior at Brandeis University, likens the process of creating a “perfect” child to wishful thinking. “You can have Einstein’s genes but certain things in the environment can stifle intellect or nurture it. You can be born with average intelligence but there is a big environmental component to who you’re going to become as a person. I don’t understand people who make a plan for what their child will be. Will they love the baby less if she or he doesn’t meet their expectations?” 

Sara Lieberman, a teacher and mother of six, is also leery. “I find it repulsive,” she says. “What do you do if you don’t get the perfect child, keep it for 30 days and put it up for adoption or drop it off somewhere like an unwanted puppy or rabbit?” 

Jamella Jones, a scholarship student at an Ivy League college, sees the ads in her campus newspaper as a personal affront. “Why aren’t the people looking for egg donors asking for me, a smart, tough, low-income woman who works incredibly hard, a biracial person with what it takes to excel as a minority in a mostly white upper-class school?” she asks. 

Indeed, what does it mean that eggs are sold on the open market, like any other commodity? Rabbi Tsvi Blanchard, Director of Organizational Development at the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership (CLAL) and a psychologist in family practice, says, “We don’t see the problem with other types of organ donation. This problem only occurs when we turn human beings into commodities who are in economic exchange. You want to make the case as clear as possible. One woman needs an egg and another freely agrees to give it. It should be consensual, just as it is when people die and leave their bodies to medical schools.” 

For Blanchard, the goal should be the creation of a repository in which resources are shared, not sold. “The Jewish community could create a fund of eggs for women who need them. They’d be available as an act of chesed, an act of love.” Health risks aside, he argues that colleges would be better off creating this kind of program for women experiencing problems conceiving than in publishing ads for the sale of body parts. 

“From a rabbinic point of view,” he adds, “the narrow self involvement that says, ‘if I can have it who cares about you,’ is a horror. Jewish moral vision is about a covenantal relationship between human beings. The thing that destroys the relationship between people within a society and between God and society is the focus on my, me, mine. In America we’re enamored of individuality. Choice and autonomy are good values but they get strained by an obsession with individuality and commodification of the individual. We’re in this together but that’s not how we treat one another. In America, if you want to have a child but can’t, it’s not my problem unless you want to buy a solution from me.” 

Gone unchecked is the social insistence that a woman is incomplete if she does not bear biological offspring. Likewise, the insistence that this is an individual problem, born out by the fact that fewer than one-third of health insurance plans cover infertility treatments, is both shortsighted and frustrating. 

“There are thousands of children available for adoption,” says New York City reproductive rights activist Tracey Davidoff. “These kids are here, in the flesh and in need, but most people who purport to be devastated by their inability to have a child reject them. Instead, they seem to believe that without a biological connection, a child is not fully theirs.” 

Still, Davidoff does not completely reject technology. “Carry- ing an embryo created by someone’s egg and your partner’s sperm is certainly an option for those with the money to buy it,” she says. “But the political implications of egg selling and retrieval—especially when particular kinds of eggs are purchased—are really very scary. Are we sure we’re ready for a Brave New World where white skin, tall, thin bodies, high standardized test scores and heterosexual behavior trump every other possibility? I shudder at the thought.”                              Z 

Eleanor J. Bader is co-author of Targets of Hatred: Anti-Abortion Terrorism, published by St. Martin’s Press. She is a frequent contributor to Library Journal, Lilith, and the New York Law Journal.