Egg Donor or Egg Seller? Fulfilling Another Woman's Dreams or Filling Your Pockets

Trouble, trouble in baby-making land reported The New York Times on May 10, “Payment Offers to Egg Donors Prompt Scrutiny”. Apparently them gals who went up north for some educatin’ graduated with something more than a diploma written in Latin. Seems a few took a class or two in economics and put it to good use: charging up to $50,000 for their ivy-coated eggs, a price women with old rotten eggs are more than willing to pay. Men are also willing to part with big bucks to become daddies, hiring surrogates to tote upscale eggs blessed with their sperm.

Well, knock me over with a feather. I thought that women risked their health, their own fertility, even their lives, taking a lot of hormones to stimulate their bodies to pop out eggs for perfect strangers out of some sort of "love" for mankind. That these women do it for money (enough to pay for about half a year at Harvard) puts them right up there on the scoundrel list along with Wall Street barons fleecing low income would-be home buyers.

The egg business may soon surpass the adoption business. About 10,000 families each year acquire a baby through donated eggs, almost as many as acquire babies through adoption, 14,000. According to the Times,

“Dr. Aaron Levine, an assistant professor of public policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology examined more than 100 egg donation ads from 63 college newspapers. He found that a quarter of them offered compensation exceeding the $10,000 maximum cited in voluntary guidelines issued by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, a professional association.

"In addition to limiting compensation, the society’s guidelines forbid paying additional fees to egg donors for specific traits. But the study found that every 100-point difference in a university’s average SAT scores was correlated with an increase of more than $2,000 in the fees advertised for potential egg donors in the campus newspaper.

"The guidelines state that payments of $5,000 or more above and beyond medical and related expenses ‘require justification’ and that payments above $10,000 ‘are not appropriate.’ Ads in newspapers at Harvard, Princeton and Yale promised $35,000 for donors, Dr. Levine found, while an ad placed on behalf of an anonymous couple in The Brown Daily Herald offered $50,000 for ‘an extraordinary egg donor.’"

The article doesn’t say what a Columbia grad could garner, hopefully not enough to entice my youngest daughter, a lioness diplomate, from selling her eggs. On the other hand as the contributor to half her DNA, maybe I could get a cut, sort of like a royalty. I can see the ads: Fund your retirement from your daughter’s eggs.” That ought to give SAT prep classes a boost.

"'The concern is that some young women may choose to donate against their own best interests,’ Dr. Levine said. ‘They’ll look at the money on offer and will overlook some of the risks.’" [It seems to me and Lorraine that donating eggs is always against a woman’s best interests.]

The American Society for Reproduction Medicine’s reason for limiting compensation to donors may not be based entirely on concern for these bright, attractive young women whose eggs command high prices. Back to Econ 101, more money to donors means less money to doctors, egg merchants, and the rest of the industry promising parenthood to those who cannot or do not choose to have children naturally.

Who’s Buying?
With many women today putting making money ahead of making babies, there’s no end to Hollywood stars, political wives, and others seeking motherhood in their late 40’s, 50’s, and even 60’s. Recently we learned that John Travolta and his wife Kelly Preston, still grieving over the loss of their son Jett, are expecting a baby. It’s safe to assume that 47 year old Preston didn’t get pregnant au naturel. She may have had her eggs frozen when they were still viable (but that’s unlikely) or she may have purchased some eggs (more likely), perhaps requiring that the seller have some Grease in her DNA or at least be a Scientologist.

If Travolta and Preston are having a “replacement” baby, they won’t be the first. After the death of their son Wade, former senator and presidential candidate John Edwards and his wife Elizabeth decided more children would bring joy back into their family. Emma Claire was born in 1998 when Elizabeth was 48, and Jack was born in 2000 when she was 50. (Subsequently John added to his lineage through a more loving way, albeit unwillingly, when 43 year old Rielle Hunter gave birth to his [initially unacknowledged] daughter, Quinn.) 

Real Risks
On the serious side, whether for love or money, egg donation presents substantial risks. Besides the physical risks (gory details below), there is the likelihood of psychological distress when the donor fully realizes that there is somebody “out there” carrying her genes. Like women who surrendered babies in closed adoptions, donors may find themselves scanning faces in shopping malls looking for people who resemble them. Unless donor and child know each other, there is a risk that the donor’s children and the children created from her eggs may meet and marry since donors may contribute multiple eggs. [For a thorough investigation of the psychological effects of donor insemination, read Annette Baran and Rueben Pannor's excellent study, Lethal Secrets.]

Unlike birthmothers in open adoptions, egg donors know nothing of the parent who raises her offspring. The recipient of the egg may be an abusive parent. I remember reading a news article years ago about a man who beat to death his infant son, created with a surrogate mother. The recipient of the egg may die before the child grows up, leaving the child to be raised by relatives, more interested in spending the child’s inheritance than nurturing this technological wonder.

According to Stanford University’s “Egg Donor Information Project”, donors commonly experience pain, abdominal swelling, tension and pressure in the ovarian area, mood swings, and bruising at injection sites. A less frequently occurring condition is ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS), a serious complication marked by chest and abdominal fluid buildup and cystic enlargement of the ovaries that can cause permanent injury and even death. Severe OHSS affects between one and 10 percent of donors.

Less frequently, drugs cause adnexal torsion, a condition that results when a stimulated ovary twists on itself and cuts off blood supply. Surgery is required to untwist and in some cases remove the ovary. Additionally, some studies suggest that one of the drugs may increase a woman’s chance of developing ovarian cancer. Doctors have reported a few cases where a drug aggravated existing tumors of the pituitary gland and caused strokes.

Eggs are retrieved through transvaginal ultrasound aspiration, a surgical procedure performed under conscious sedation. Major injury to the bladder, bowel, uterus, blood vessels or other pelvic structures occurs in approximately 1 in 500 to 1000 surgeries. Other surgical risks include acute ovarian trauma, infection, infertility, vaginal bleeding, and lacerations. Additionally, anesthetic complications may occur.

These are the known dangers. As Times readers, Diane Beeson and Tina Stevens, pointed out in a letter to the editor, much is unknown:

“Without long-term follow up, it is simply not possible to offer potential egg donors a truly informed consent about the long-term risks of taking the powerful synthetic hormones associated with the egg retrieval process. Yet, there is no effort now under way to establish a registry to find out what the long-term risks are. Why is that?

"Consider what happened to magazine editor Liz Tilberis, comedian-actor Gilda Radner, playwright Wendy Wasserstein and many other women who underwent hyperstimulation and died of cancer in the prime of their lives. Shouldn’t we first attempt to provide a full informed consent before financially encouraging women to take powerful hormones?”

Egg 'donor' and child unite on 'Katie'

Jane

UPDATE on 6/12: Katic Couric successfully navigated the reunion between Britten Gilmore, her mother Janet Schreibman, and Brittan's "egg donor" JoLana Talbot and Talbot's two daughters. Couric and her guests minced no words in emphasizing the importance of knowing biological relatives and the joy of establishing a relationship with them. Kudos Katie! 

What we found remarkable was the complete openness of Britten's parents, who told her the truth about her origins when she was old enough to ask (apparently where babies came from), and continued to answer her questions as she got older. JoLana Talbot said everyone should have all the friends and family they could, and the Schreibmans spoke of expanding their own family. Hugs all around. Britten and her half sisters, especially Talbot's younger daughter, look very much alike. When JoLana mentioned "strong genes" we noticed that nobody winced. 

For the half hour that this story took up, little was asked of Britten's father, who is both her day-to-day dad and her biological father.  Wendy Kramer who, with her son, founded the Donor Sibling Registry spoke from audience, saying that since the registry began in 2000, it had made 11,000 matches. FMF assumes that the site is booming today. Reunion shows always lead to an uptick in search and reunion.
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Review of Coraline and Perfection: Perfect Parents, Perfect Children

Last Sunday my husband and I saw Coraline, a 3-D film using stop action technology based on Neil Gamain’s book of the same name. It was a welcome break from finding and perusing the manuals needed to re-set the clocks on the micro-wave, the CD player, and loads of other gadgets.

Coraline is an 11 year old girl who moves with her loving but work stressed real parents to a new home, a large and mysterious mansion divided into three apartments. She discovers a birth canal-like passage which leads her to a fantastical world. There she finds loving, perfect other parents, appearing identical to her real parents except that they have buttons for eyes. After several visits to the other, button-eyed parents, they tell her she can stay if she agrees to have buttons sewn into her eyes. Horrified, she refuses. The other parents morph into witches and Coraline’s real parents become trapped in the button-eyed world. Coraline must rescue her real parents as well as three lost souls who had agreed to have buttons sewn into their eyes years before.

As a birth mother, my first reaction was that the story was meant to convey one of those trite pro-adoption messages. You know the kind; a seemingly wise character says to the confused adoptee “Your real parents are the parents who raised you. Don’t search for them that birthed you; you’ll just open a can of worms (or find a bunch of buttons.)

But I got to thinking. The characters identified as the “real” parents looked like Coraline and shared her interest in gardening. The button-eyed faux parents disguised themselves to look like the real parents but underneath they were evil witches. So maybe the message is that first parents are real parents and adoptive parents are false and untrustworthy.

Perhaps, of course, the story has nothing to do with adoption (the reviews I’ve read don’t mention adoption but then adoption themes are rarely seen by non-triad members unless adoption is spelled out in capital letters.) Coraline may be a modern version of The Wizard of Oz or Alice in Wonderland telling children that the magical land over the rainbow, down the rabbit hole, or at the end of a tunnel is scary and there’s no place like home.

I recommend Coraline. It has wonderful graphics and a thought-provoking story line regardless of how one’s thoughts progress.

While Coraline explores the search for perfect parents, Perfection, a play by Measure 58 mother Helen Hill, recounts the quest for perfect children. (Measure 58 was a 1998 ballot measure which gave Oregon-born adoptees the right to obtain their original birth certificates. Ms. Hill largely funded the process.)

Perfection was produced in Portland and ran for three weeks in February. It takes place in 1934 when states routinely sterilized those deemed to be genetically inferior. In the play, a doctor at a state institution prepares to sterilize a resident who recently gave birth to a child which was taken from her. The woman is poor and uneducated but not mentally disabled. The doctor convinces her to submit to an operation (he does not disclose the nature of the operation) by telling her the operation is necessary for her child to be returned.

Thus, the play blends themes of eugenics and adoption. Helen Hill has experienced both. She was adopted as an infant and her adoptive father was a Creek Indian who had been sterilized under a eugenics program. She used money she inherited from him to fund the Measure 58 campaign.

Much of the dialogue in Perfection is in the form of an argument between the doctor and his nurse about the righteousness of eugenics, some of it bordering on a polemic, a method which never works well. The play as a whole works, however, because it has sympathetic characters and good drama.

My first thought, though, was “you’re beating a dead horse.” After the disclosures of Nazi atrocities, eugenics was thoroughly discredited. Being against eugenics is like being against slavery. No one is for it today.

As I thought about it, however, I realized the belief that tinkering with nature can create better human beings is very much alive today. Adoption, after all, is a form of social eugenics. Pre-natal testing gives prospective parents the option of aborting embryos found to have genetic flaws.

The counterpart to preventing the birth of inferior people is the creation of superior ones, something the Nazis also pursued. Spend five minutes on Google looking at egg donor websites and you’ll see how important genetics is to the process. From a March 15, 2006 article in USA Today:

“Advertisements in campus newspapers and on websites plead daily. ‘Egg Donors Needed. $10,000,’ says one in The Daily Californian, the student newspaper at the University of California, Berkeley. The ad, from a San Diego broker called A Perfect Match, seeks women who are "attractive, under the age of 29" and have SAT scores above 1,300.”

Conceive Abilities, a fertility business with clinics in Chicago and Colorado tries to soften the reality that fees paid to donors relate to the quality of the donor:

“Our agency compensates egg donors anywhere between $5,000 and $10,000 and can be dependent upon a number of considerations some of which include location, number of previous donations and ethnic diversity.

Then there is The Egg Donor Program which boasts:

“The Egg Donor Program is the premier egg donation agency in the United States for solving female infertility by IVF donor egg treatment. Our Los Angeles based egg donor clinic has the most beautiful and accomplished donors in the country. Our egg donor center is also known for its extensive database of Superdonors, which includes hundreds of women from many diverse ethnic backgrounds. For over 15 years we have specialized in matching couples with exquisite young women whose motivations are heartfelt.

If you are interested in becoming an egg donor and want to be listed with the country’s most prestigious agency, we will ensure that your journey is safe and gratifying and we will reward you for your gesture with commemorating gifts and the highest level of compensation. We will treat you like the angel you are.”

In the end, the message of both Coraline and Perfection seems to be: let’s accept what nature has given us.
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PS: Lorraine here. Serious consideration is being given to changing the name of this blog. Stay tuned. All the old posts will stay but the only consideration is the links we have from other bloggers.

Even in 'modern families' the need to know biological heritage

Jane

Opponents of gay marriage often raise the specter of gays raising children they adopt or create through "modern fertility techniques" claiming that gays raising children would lead to the breakdown of the family, which would lead to the disintegration of civilization. Well, of course gays have been raising children long before recorded history. Those Greeks doing it in bath houses were often married with children. And gays like my late sister Helen married members of the opposite sex, had children, divorced, and taken up with a same-sex partner.

 Since the 1970's gays have adopted children both from foster care and as newborn infants. They have also created children through sperm and egg donations, IVF and surrogacy. With courts striking down gay marriage bans, it's likely that more gays will marry and acquire children. The critical question

Judge: Egg Donor Cory Sause is Boy's Mother--and will get parenting rights

Cory Sause and son

An Oregon judge has ruled that an egg donor mother has the right to be part of her child's life, despite the efforts of the wealthy sperm-donor father who wants to cut her out of the picture. The ruling was based on the "contradictory" agreement that the egg-donor mother and the father signed prior to the birth of a son and emails and other evidence showing that the father intended to keep the mother in his son's life, changing his mind only after the boy was born. In her decision, Judge Amy Holmes in Portland said that she will meet with the parties to develop a parenting plan.

Jane

The case does not signal a breakthrough for all egg donors who after birth wish to participate in the resulting child's upbringing, for this case involved an agreement between two parties who were a couple at the time an egg was implanted in a surrogate, and the agreement signed was not cut-and-dried as is usual between parties who do not have a prior relationship. The child, a boy named Samuel, is now two.

Creating children, no matter how, in the quest to have a family

A Family, No Matter How It's Created. Hmm, well, that sucks if you are the one who is created in a petrie dish to make someone else's life "complete; or spirited away from your native land in Malawi because what Madonna wants Madonna will have....

Today the next chapter in the saga of my "missing" granddaughter will have to wait, as the letters in the New York Times in response to Ross Douthat's column, The Birds and the Bees (via the Fertility Clinic) that we wrote about last week garnered a number of letters in the Times today, under that headline: A Family, No Matter How It's Created.

Well, that sums it up because that is certainly the attitude of the loudest voices out there in society. We want children! We want a family! We aren't having any the normal way! WAAAH! (forgetting to add that most of the people with conception issues are past the age when fertility is at its peak). Yes, I know there will be commenters who will write and say, You are too cold, what about pollution, my mother was 46, disease, etc., but folks, look at the statistics. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine says it well:

"As women delay childbearing, there is now an unrealistic expectation that medical science can undo the effects of aging." 

Every individual and couple is unique and could be more fertile or less fertile as compared to the average for their age. Some 30 year-olds already have significantly diminished egg quality and dwindling supplies of eggs, and some 43 year-olds can be fertile. There are no guarantees that an individual woman will have a slow and smooth drop in her fertility potential as she ages. Although rare, it is possible to have a rapid decline in egg quantity and quality as early as the teens or twenties.

One letter--the first one!--in the Times today is from the medical director of Princeton IVF, Seth G. Derman, whose job obviously depends on supplying what infertile couples are buying. Derman writes that to deny the people who pay his salary the right to create babies with anonymous donor eggs and sperm "would indeed be cruel." Already I've got a bad taste in my mouth. But what made the hair on the back of my neck stand up was this statement:

"Restrictions would also lead to an increase in directed family donations (like sister to sister). As a fertility specialist, I have done a number of these types of egg donations and am far more concerned with the emotional health of these families than those who use anonymous donation."

So he admits that he is ONLY concerned with the adults in the room, not the child being created. At least if it is a sister-to-sister egg donation and maybe gestation surrogacy, that child is at least going to grow up among people who look like him and, say, have the same aversion to Brussels sprouts (which is genetic, by the way). Apparently, too bad for you if you happen to be a kid put together there from bought parts.You are not the client, not his problem 15 or 20 years later when you are burning with questions of identity.

And there is the usual, we created our child this way, but we LOVE that child, so there, letter. Really, folks, we expect that if you go to the trouble of having a child through sperm or egg donation, you are probably going to love that child, but does that love, Jeannie Lorenz, of Bethesda, MD., also include having answers for them when they want to know whose egg they are a product of or whose sperm? Why they can curl their tongues, hate the taste of caffeine, or constantly question authority, are good in math, all inherited traits? When you can't curl your tongue, love all things caffeine, believe in rules and are terrible in math?

However, adoptee, therapist and author, Betty Jean Lifton, as well as a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Paul Brinich, held up our side of the argument: that not knowing who you were at birth is the cause of much anxiety for a great many adopted people. Betty Jean wrote:

"However, he [Douthat] quotes a Web-based survey that says offspring of sperm donors are more likely than adoptees to have identity confusion.

"My in-depth work and that of other adoption specialists show that the adopted are just as much the victims of the “webs of secrecy” that surround them as the biological children of sperm donors.

"Adoptees wonder just as much about their origins, envy peers who know their biological parents, worry that their parents have lied to them about important matters, and wonder if someone who looks like them might be related.

Adoptees have worked for decades to end the secrecy and restore the rights of the adopted to their original birth certificates and knowledge of their heritage. The movement has already helped raise the important questions that donor-conceived adults are now asking."

Betty Jean Lifton
Cambridge, Mass., May 31, 2010

And Brinich adds:

"Gametes obtained from donors — paid or not — carry in their wake a host of emotional complications. Surrogacy adds further twists.

"The perennial question of childhood — “Where do babies come from?” — has always challenged parents. Likewise, every adolescent has wrestled with “Who am I?”

"As the answers to these very normal questions become more and more complicated, it’s clear that technology has leapt ahead of society. Assisted reproductive technology requires thoughtful, psychologically attuned responses by parents, professionals and our society"

Paul Brinich
Chapel Hill, N.C., May 31, 2010

To which we add: Amen. Anyone considering having a child with anonymous sperm or an anonymous egg, ought to attend a session with the children of sperm donors who wish to be able to answer natural basic questions about their identities. The U.S. Declaration of Independence, based on what might be called the laws of nature as men and women perceive them, (."..the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them"), guarantees all of the citizens of the United States the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Stripping an infant of its identity, as well as  telling a mother that she has no right to know what happened to that child once he or she is adopted, denies both of the parties the right to any normal "pursuit of happiness" that all others enjoy.

Personally, I've made myself a good life, more or less; I live in a beautiful place in a nice home that right now is being reshingled with red cedar, and the workers are pounding against the east wall of the house as I write today. It will be fresh and new within the week; then we start on the deck that is falling apart. I've had work and I've had love, but my life has been so indelibly marred by not only the loss of my daughter to adoption, but also by the 1935 New York law that took away the right for her and I to ever know each other. And that denied me whatever comfort I might have knowing she was alive, and well, until I went around the law, paid a searcher, and found her. She was the adopted daughter of two other people, but she was also my natural daughter and I had every right in the cosmos to know where she is.--lorraine
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Before anyone starts going crazy over what is "natural" in the order of things, and how that natural can be interpreted to many misfortunes, I understand, but if you are going to bitch about my interpretation  here, bitch elsewhere. It just wears us all out.

The universal need to know who you are

Lorraine

"The sperm donors, they agreed, had no place on the family tree."

A couple will have four children: the first was conceived naturally; the second with donor sperm; two are in the process of being adopted. "All four of our children are 100 percent in our family tree....The genetic connection has never mattered." (Emphasis added.)

Having a Baby Today; and a new book about identity when adopted

photo by Ken Robbins
We've skated in the past over this generation of young women choosing not to have children until OMG it's too late....well, today, two books reviewed in the New York Times Style section caught my eye: Rattled! a memoir by Christine Coppa is about a young woman who got pregnant at 26 and decided to have the baby, even though daddy split; the other, In Her Own Sweet Time: Unexpected Adventures in Finding, Love, Commitment and Motherhood by Rachel Lehmann-Haupt is the story of the author, now 39, who is considering insemination unless Mr. Right shows up on her beach blanket this summer. Don't know if she is considering insemination by someone who the child might someday be able to know. Here's the link to the Times. Perhaps we could send her a copy of Lethal Secrets: The Psychology of Donor Istemination, Problems and Solutions by Annette Baran and Reuben Pannor, long time adoption-reform advocates.

You probably won't have any trouble deciding which author we at Birth Mother, First Mother Forum would prefer to have over for tea or a rum and tonic.

And from New Jersey, Linda has alerted us to a new book by a fellow Jerseyan, Ann Bauer: The Sound of Hope about her quest to find her original parents and identity.

And while we are feeling frisky and cranky today: check out what just popped up after I hit the publish post, View Blog:
Shall we barf now or later?

• Loading...

• Hot & Smart Egg Donors Database of 100+ available egg donors including prof. models! www.findadonor.com

• Sperm Donor Find Local Sperm Donor Banks. Get Reliable Advice In Your Area. DoTellAll.com

• IVF in 14 days in Europe Affordable IVF vacations, great success, free meds, donor eggs, PGD www.myivfalternative.com

• Artificial Insemination Need Artificial Insemination? See a Fertility Specialist now. www.IntegraMedFertility.com HAPPY FATHER'S DAY, Y'ALL

Would-be Egg 'Donor' imagines a child growing up with genetic strangers

Lorraine

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST
Why would you not donate your eggs?  The profit is great--$10,000!--the risk seems at first blush small (if inconvenient), and you seem... magnanimous. So why not do it?

An awareness of what is lost when there is not shared blood led one young woman, Simi Lampert,  to change her mind about selling her eggs. Calling her a donor is such BS the head spins. Yet what she became aware of as she considered marketing her eggs is exactly what is ignored in adoption: how being with genetic strangers marks one as different. The other. Not from the same stock. Together but separate. From "Why I Couldn’t Donate My Eggs" on Tablet, A New Read on Jewish Life:

"My siblings and I were raised by my mother, who was an only child, and my stepfather. One of the things about my childhood that’s always bothered me, something I wish could be different, is that my step-cousins never really felt like my cousins. (Emphasis added.)

Mother denied visitation with son conceived with her egg

Jane

An Oregon woman who let her former boyfriend, wealthy Portland developer Jordan Schnitzer, use her eggs to create a son lost visiting rights to that son--now five--this week. Cory Sause, 38, had been able to visit her son since 2017 after a protracted court battle. 

In a 2-1 decision, the Oregon Court of Appeals reversed the lower court making Schnitzer, 70, the sole legal parent of the boy, Samuel. The majority opinion stated that Sause had not demonstrated a full commitment to parenting as required by Oregon's assisted-reproduction law to have parenting rights.

What makes a mother?

Unwilling mother Sherri Shepherd

As if we didn't already know, the whole "assisted reproduction" business is a mess, both from a legal and a moral standpoint. The latest escapades are those of Sherri Shepherd who lost her fight not to be a mother and Nick Loeb who is fighting to be a father.

Shepherd, a former co-host on The View, entered into an agreement with her then husband Lamar Sally and Jessica Bartholomew to have Bartholomew carry a child created through Sally's sperm and a donated egg. By the time the baby boy, Lamar Sally, Jr., was born eight months ago, Shepherd had filed for divorce, disclaiming responsibility for the child and refusing to pay support, leaving Bartholomew whose name was on the birth certificate on the hook for thousands of dollars in medical bills. "Not so fast" said a Pennsylvania court. "A deal is a deal. You signed on the dotted line and you're a legal mother, like it or not. Pay up!"

Exploiting first mothers, then and now

(Jane, second row on the far right)

Babies come from mothers who don't want them was the shocking message of an adoption agency advertisement from the 1940's. The agency guaranteed prospective adoptive parents that babies would be matched to them not only in appearance, but also in intelligence. And unbelievably, prospective adoptive parents were also promised a "one year return policy" if the baby didn't fit into their family.

Ann Fessler's film, A Girl Like Her, includes this and other videos to present pictorially the ugly truth about adoption in the mid-twentieth century. As the videos of happy housewives dancing in their oh-so-modern kitchens and teens in full skirted strapless prom dresses switch to pictures of soldiers in Vietnam and war protesters, off screen first mothers tell their stories of loss without redemption.

Does it matter who your father is?

Jane

When Lorena Thompson Madrone of Oceanside, Oregon decided to have a baby, it was strictly a DIY affair. Becase she was concerned about having to "legally share" the child with the biological father, Lorena and her partner, Karah Gretchen Madrone, came up with a lamebrain scheme to obscure the father's identity by having two sperm donors. Of course one of two gives the child pretty decent odds of figuring which man had the cojones.

As far as avoiding legal issues around paternity, the scheme wouldn't have worked anyway. While it may have kept true dad at bay, if Lorena had applied for welfare, the state would have been after both men with a DNA kit in a flash.

Surrogacy today: The American Way?

Lorraine her daughter Jane, third meeting in 1982.

At a ladies lunch the other day: One woman, brought by a friend but unknown to the rest of us, describes how her gay friends had children. First, one of the partners had a child with a surrogate, a little girl. Origin of egg is uncertain at this point, but probably from a third party; I hesitate to ask. I don't want to be a part of this conversation but there I am, drinking iced tea.

My friends all know my status. One woman present has, in a moment of inebriated anger, called me a "reproductive agent," a phrase I am certain she got from the grandparents of children adopted from Russia, her close friends. I know, it's terrible,

When Daddy's Name is Donor...

We're heading back into murky waters today taking another look at a report, "My Daddy's Name is Donor," from the conservative think tank, the Institute for American Values (just the name alone sets off alarm bells), but nonetheless, their findings are at least worth analyzing. One of the authors of the report, Karen Clark, is a child of donor sperm herself. One of the major findings is summed up here:

Children of anonymous sperm donors "are hurting more, are more confused, and feel more isolated

Hollywood celebs beget babies any way they can

Having children via surrogacy and adoption continues to be popular in the world of fantasy and entertainment. Sixty-eight year old Robert De Niro and his wife, 56-year-old wife Grace Hightower, became the parents of a daughter, Helen Grace Hightower, via a surrogate this past December. De Niro has three other surrogate produced via surrogate, a son with Hightower ands twin sons with former model Toukie Smith.

Rickie Martin, Mathew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, Elton John, and Nicole Kidman have all become parents in the past few years thanks to women who "donate" their eggs and women who carry the babies.

Anonymous baby making in British Columbia is outlawed

Lorraine

Sperm donors will no longer be allowed to be anonymous in British Columbia if a decision from a Supreme Court judge there today stands. Judge Elaine Adair wrote that anonymous donation, "is harmful to the child, and it is not in the best interests of donor offspring." The ruling found sections of the B.C. Adoption Act and Adoption Regulations unconstitutional. Anonymous sperm and egg donation is already outlawed in Great Britain.

Arizona law forces parenthood on the unwilling

Three-day-old embryo--8 cells in toto, 

barely visible to the naked eye. At

implantation (between 5-8 days), an 

embryo is approximately one-

hundredth of an inch long.

A bill signed by Arizona Governor Doug Ducey on April 3 requires that frozen embryos go to the party who wants "to develop them" in the event of a dispute. In other words, the non-consenting partner is forced to become a parent, sort of. The law  provides that the unwilling parent would have no parental responsibilities and would not have to pay child support.

The bill was supported the Center for Arizona Policy, part of the anti-abortion Family Research Council. To tell the truth, the anti-abortion people drive me nuts. They love babies (or embryos) until they're born. Then it's "tough luck, parents" if they need some help raising the kids. Arizona won't even pay teachers and support staff a living wage--they rank 47 out of 59 in teachers' pay--and they are staged a one-day strike today.

A Birth Mother's perspective: When the adoptee keeps the reunion a secret

To tell or not to tell one's adoptive parents about an adoptee's search and reunion generated lively debate when I left a brief PS at a previous post (Thanking your birth mother for letting you be adopted). And fellow blogger and birth mother Linda was roundly dressed down by commenters, most if whom were adopted, for suggesting that the reunion in the dark is not a good idea. While adopted people may have many reasons, and good ones at that, for keeping their search and reunion secret, I'm going to tackle it from the birth mother's perspective...because this is Birth Mother/First Mother Forum.

People, it's different for everyone. If you are an adoptee, and for peace in your family and your peace of mind, you have to keep search and reunion a deep dark secret, so be it. It's sad, it speaks volumes about the depth of your relationship with your parents, but it is your right and choice. No one denies that. What you--the adoptee--decide to do is under your control.

But this means that if there is a reunion--no matter who searches, birth mother or surrendered child--the birth mother and her family will never be able to participate in your life other than surreptitious meetings, say, at a coffee shop or some other out-of-the-way place where adoptive parents are never going to show up. And if you want to go visit your birth mother's family, it will be difficult to explain why, say, you are going to Des Moines or Detroit for the weekend.

It means that when there is a birth, and the natural grandmother wants to visit--ohmygod, at the hospital--that has to be carefully orchestrated, lest the other parents show up the same day. Sacre bleu! It means that if there is a wedding, the natural mother can not be there, or if she is, she is the unknown woman fighting tears and sitting by herself at the back of the church, the woman who slips out unnoticed before someone asks who she is. It means birthdays and bar mitzvahs and graduations and the other high points of a life are off limits to the person who gave you life. It means a limited relationship with a woman who may desperately want to know the all of you, and dammit, be included in your life.

Ouch. Secrecy about her return into your life now will make her feel once again like the dirty dark secret we first mothers were made to feel when we surrendered our children. We will understand one of two things: that our child's other parents cannot deal realistically with their child's origins (and that sucks); and two, that we continue to be the unworthy ones, those who counts less, "lifegivers" who are to be forever shunted aside. Of course I'm talking here about the mothers such as us bloggers three who chose not to keep our first child, for two of us, our only child, a secret, who wanted to make that child a part of our lives as openly and as lovingly as possible.

So for first mothers like us, the secrecy will be eternally depressing. Apparently in a lot of cases of the people who read and write about adoption here and elsewhere, this kind of clandestine affair with the reunited birth parents will be necessary; that we can understand. But accept that for us, it was always be heartrending and hurtful. Not unlike how adopted people feel when their birth mothers/birth fathers do not openly share their existence with their new families. Yeah, that sucks too. We get it.

Personally, I'd like to shake the !@#$ out of those birth parents, including all sperm and egg donors, who will not meet their children. For god's sake, they are your children, people! Many of the people who comment at this blog have been rejected by their birth parents. My own surrendered daughter never met her natural father because he could "not handle it, not just now," he said, "maybe some other day." And then he died.

Every adopted person has the unalterable unassailable right to meet his or her birth parents, mother and father, face to face, at least once. Common decency would seem to dictate that every birth parent has at least that single obligation to her or his offspring. After that, the choice is up to the people involved. And some will keep the reunion secret. I am sympathetic to adopted people who do not tell their parents, but understand it will be a a slap in the heart to the birth mother, if the person seemingly keeps up a good relationship with his adoptive parents.

Times Past...but not forgotten

When I wrote Birthmark a zillion years ago, I heard from friends that there was a lot of table-pounding going on at dinner parties where the subject of the book came up: What gave that woman the #$@!ing right to write that book! Who in the hell does she think she is? Bleep Bleep Bleep, so I was told by friends who were there and were amazed at the hot heads that erupted. To my face, I was attacked by some media people and acquaintances I loosely thought of as friends. Some friends. As regular readers know, I've been attacked in the here and now (Birth Mothers Attacked as Usual, or Maybe I Need New Friends and Living in Interesting Times) if the subject comes up.

What gave me the right to search for my daughter? Who in the fuck ever took it away? The culture? The state that forced the unholy agreement unto me if I wanted their help? They were wrong. My need to know my offspring was as great as any adoptee's need to know their forebears, and no piece of paper can abrogate either. We are talking basics here.

And who gave the adoptive parents the right to pretend that their child is not the offspring of some other woman, some other mother, some other family, some other culture?

As I said earlier, it's different for everyone. I found my daughter when she was a minor and revealed my identity to her adoptive mother on the phone, so secrecy was never an issue. And we know that some terrific adoptive parents in closed adoptions actually do the search for their children, and those people I commend. Barbara Bisantz Raymond (who wrote both a page-turner biography of the woman who shaped modern adoption more than anyone else, The Baby Thief, The Untold Story of Georgia Tann), searched for and found her daughter's first mother. O Solo Mama's comments here and at her eponymous blog, and Malinda's at AdoptionTalk, for example, keep me cheerful and hopeful. Occasionally I am contacted by adoptive parents who want to help their children--usually in their teens or in college--search, and though I do not do searches, I steer them to someone who does.

But secrecy after reunion? Adoptees will do it as they must, but accept that it will limit your relationship with your birth mother. And for women like we like us, the secrecy will always hurt. --lorraine

Making babies, just to make ends meet

By Sarah Williamson for the New York Times

Making Babies, Just to Make Ends Meet is a sickening commentary on the American way of the future of birth, as well as the title of an essay in the New York Times Sunday Review section. The writer, Susan Straight, writes about her neighbor, a woman of 39, who had been pumping breast milk for the baby she carried and delivered for a wealthy couple in their late 50s who, with four teenage sons, wanted a girl. "They bought the milk too," is what she says about the blonde and older couple for whom she worked for as a baby carrier.