Some things in life just aren’t for sale

Monday, April 8, 1996

Decision to donate eggs sparks internal value examination

Once, I was at one of my worst financial lows; I was browsing
the Daily Bruin Classifieds. I already have two and a half jobs, so
I skipped the traditional "Help Wanted" section and looked for any
quick money opportunities. My eyes were wandering when I read
something to the effect of: "Donate your eggs to a needy couple.
$2,500 compensation for medical expenses."

I usually would have skipped, but on this day, I thought of all
the bills I couldn’t pay and the groceries that I couldn’t buy. I
was desperate enough not only to read the ad, but to seriously
think about the idea.

I wondered what the procedure entailed. I imagined that the
donor gets tested for every disease on earth. After being cleared,
she probably makes an appointment to go to the clinic, where they
probably suck out an egg the same way an abortion is done. I
probably got this impression from sitcoms and movies about sperm
banks. They make it look so simple. The men get tested, come back
and "jack off" into tubes. I thought women probably just lie down
and get vacuumed.

As I was imagining myself straddled in stirrups to have eggs
extracted, my conscience jumped into my head: "Shauna, what are you
doing thinking about this ­ are you crazy?" I didn’t listen. I
called two of the agencies, reached their voice mails (thank God)
and very softly whispered that "I was interested in having more
information mailed to me." I told them my address and that my name
was "S. Robertson." I also told them my age, which I knew was a
positive, and my ethnicity, which I presumed would be a
negative.

By the time I finished whispering my information and hung up, my
conscience had resurrected itself. A debate began in my mind:

Shauna, you have gazillions of eggs. You’re not going to use
them all; why not give them away?

It’s not giving if you’re paid.

A little compensation is the least a couple could do for giving
them the gift of life.

You sound like Nordstroms. With a purchase of $30, you get this
free gift. With $2,500, you get these free eggs. For God’s sake,
Shauna, you would be selling a piece of your body. You would be a
high-tech prostitute.

Come on now, it’s not like I’m on the street with a cooler full
of eggs and a cardboard sign reading, "Hey baby, want some of
these?" These women want to have babies, but can’t; why shouldn’t I
help everyone enjoy the gift of bringing a child into this
world?

That’s God’s job, not yours.

Well, she got me there. I was returning to my logical self. I
began to rationalize myself out of the idea. "Everything happens
for a reason," I told myself. What if God wants a certain number of
people to be infertile in order to have a pool of possible parents
for all the children in foster homes and adoption agencies? (I have
never understood why people pays tens of thousands of dollars to
have babies when foster homes are overridden with "unwanted"
children. I know they aren’t 5 days old, but most of them are young
enough for the parents to be able to take them to their first day
of school.)

If I did give my eggs to a needy couple, I would live with the
looming "what ifs?" What if the parents are abusive,
child-molesting bile? What if Ricki Lake tells me some lie to get
me to be a guest on her show, and I find out that the woman on my
left is actually "the child I gave away" 20 years ago? And worst of
all, what if every time I saw a young person with my forehead or
mouth or eyes, I had this urge to run up to him/her and ask,
"Excuse me, were you a test-tube baby?"

The sense of loss, the loss of a child and the loss of control
over her/his destiny, would be too great a cost for $2,500. After I
decided against selling my eggs, I ran into an acquaintance of mine
who is a director of a genetics clinic. I asked her what exactly
donating your eggs involves to find out if my amateur guesses were
right.

I was dead wrong. It is a complicated process. My partner and I
would have to be tested for HIV, have protected sex or refrain from
sex for six months, and be tested again. I would be put on rigorous
hormones that could have serious effects on my body, including my
moods and periods. And, the procedure itself is not a simple
vacuum. She didn’t tell me the details, but she said it was at
least, uncomfortable, but more likely painful.

Is all of this drama worth $2,500? What about $10,000? No, I
would still have to deal with the ethical crisis of having sold a
piece of me. This is not to say that donating eggs is wrong. The
arena of biogenetics is entirely gray. Humans are fighting nature,
destiny or God on levels never imagined. Is that right? Well,
that’s another column.

The only way I would donate my eggs is if it truly were a
donation. When you donate things, you don’t receive money (although
maybe I could get a tax deduction), and you know to whom you’re
donating. If my brother’s future wife or my best friend couldn’t
conceive because of some medical problem, then I would consider it
more seriously.

In either circumstance, I wouldn’t accept money because it would
be a gift. Besides, how can you put a price on the gift of
life?

Long after I decided that my motivations for wanting to "donate"
my eggs were impure, I received information from both of the
companies I called. One sent me a generic packet detailing
everything that is involved. The other sent me a note saying that
in all the years she’s worked at her clinic, she has never once had
an African American applicant. That didn’t surprise me.

From my experience, I can’t imagine any black people I know
paying all of that money to have to carry a baby when there are
literally thousands (sometimes, a few can be found within the
extended family network) of black babies that need homes. It did,
however, make my ethical debate kind of unnecessary.

I am curious to know if other people went through the same
thought process. And for those who decided to donate, what was the
deciding factor? Did you regret it? And most of all, do men go
through the same ethical dilemmas as do women?

Robinson is a fourth-year African-American studies student. Her
column runs on alternate Tuesdays.

The only way I would donate my eggs is if it truly were a
donation. When you donate things, you don’t receive money.