Egg Donation and you

     One of the most interesting sidebar ads I've ever seen on Facebook popped up just the other day for NurtureDonors.com, a recent arrival to the UK which recruits egg donors and pairs them up with couples in need of fertility treatments. After a lot of reading (it's exam season- I have a lot of procrastination to do) I'm seriously considering egg donation, and my conviction that this is a good idea is emphasised by the fact that the website annoys me so very much.

     It's clear Nurture Donors want young hip fertile gals just like myself both by their advertising strategy via social media and the fact that they insist on referring to their donors as 'gals'. A couple of times, they even call me 'girlfriend'. They over-use exclamation marks and they misuse apostrophes and hyphens and when sentences like this pop up my pedantic grammarian nerves are really close to breaking point-

"A gals BF is often her Mom - if you are going to disclose your intention's to her about joining Nurture as a donor - how does she feel?" {sic for this entire sentence.}

     There are six things which annoy me here. Can you spot them all? Answers at the end.

     The last, and certainly most thought-provoking, is the fact that I have to ask my mum for her opinions on my decision to donate a product of my own reproductive system to someone who has a better use for it. I also need to make sure my partner is okay with it, and have a contingency plan in case the future Mr Jenni isn't cool with the fact that there is someone in the world who shares genetic data with me.

     I realise of course that even if I'm okay with a little person who looks like me running around unbeknownst to me, my partner or family may not. But there's a difference between having a torrid love-affair with an Italian barista and donating eggs- there would be no bond of history between me and this hypothetical child. What it boils down to, in my mind, is a few spare gametes going to people in need. Do I really have to get someone else's approval to do something to my own body? To a very intimate part of my body? Because I really think the last time I asked anyone, even my mother, if I was allowed to do something to my own body was when I was eleven and wanted to get my ears pierced.

     I'm far more on the Nurture than the Nature side of this particular debate. It may be because my own genetic history is so blurry due to adoption that I see it this way. Though the amount of blood shared by my parents and their parents may be lower than average, legally and emotionally and practically they are related. If I were to aid the creation of a little person, that little person would be legally, emotionally and practically nothing to do with me. They would be the responsibility and the pride of their mother(s) and / or father(s), not of me, my partner or my parents, and I am absolutely fine with that, despite what some gamete donation sites may assume.

     Always on the hunt for more perspective, I found another UK-based donor company which recruits sperm and egg donors and lets them pick one another with a system that looks worryingly like online dating. Aside from a lot of very worrying phrases about sperm donors finding a 'personal arrangement' with 'lesbian couple looking to meet that special someone' {sic}, there are also some notable differences between the egg donors and sperm donors' pages at PrideAngel.com.

     While sperm donors are kindly reassured that they will have 'no parental or financial responsibility', and won't be 'pursued for child support', egg donors are told, quite strictly, that 'the birth mother retains all legal rights to the child'. So while our sperm donor wipes his brow in relief, thankful a couple of angry lesbians won't be chasing after him with a baby that has his nose, our egg donor is cursing the fact that she can't steal a newborn from its mother. This is not rent-a-womb, girlfriend, don't think you can get yourself a kid without doing all the hard gestation work yourself.

     While we're on it, what about couples who physically can't do the gestation for themselves? Though PrideAngel throws the word "lesbian" around like it's going out of fashion, the idea of surrogacy is never even mentioned. The recipient of donor eggs is described directly as someone who "is unable to produce viable eggs from her own ovaries". Yes, it's possible this company doesn't deal with the tricky business of male gay couples and surrogate mothers, but once again it's the women who want a child, and the men who are just there to be a good samaritan and find out the details of this 'personal arrangement'.

     Just in case you were wondering, my parents are all for it. After one particularly bizarre episode of Ally MacBeal where our eponymous hero's long-lost ten-year-old biological daughter shows up, my dad said I should consider donating eggs, and my mum said that if she were younger she'd consider donating too.

     The way I see it, I give blood, and I need my blood on a daily basis. It is quite essential for the whole breathing in and out thing, whereas my ova are very much not. Considering I would only ever want to use a maximum of three for their intended purpose, and I've already thrown away a good eighty or ninety, why not let someone else make use of a few?

Answers to the Annoyed Pedant quiz:

1. the use of the term "gals" in a non-ironic manner
2. the absence of an apostrophe in the construction "a gal's BF" where the "gal" owns "BF"
3. the use of the acronym BF for best friend
4. the use of the American term Mom by a company aimed at women in England
5. the misuse of an apostrophe in the plural "intentions"
6. see above