by Wesley J. Smith
Click here to watch the related music video.
Pro choice and pro life women have come together in coalition to protect women from being exploited for their eggs by Big Biotech. Reason? Women would take all the risks and the companies could make all the money but for the small payments to women to undergo the unnecessary extration procedure. Read more…
This article was first published October 13, 2011, at cbc-network.org.
By Jennifer Lahl, CBC President
Despite all our society’s talk of civility these days, it seems the public square is only becoming more of a lion’s den. And people of a certain stripe are being excluded or marginalized purely on the basis of their religious beliefs. Read more…
Wonderful! The world is coming to its senses!
FROM THE IONA INSTITUTE BLOG:
In the last year to 18 months the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR, pictured) had handed down several excellent decisions. The most famous is the Lautsi judgement in which it ruled that Italy could place crucifixes on the walls of state classrooms.
In another, it ruled that a prohibition on same-sex marriage did not violate the European Convention on Human Rights, and this week it ruled that a ban on the use of donor sperm or eggs does not violate the Convention. Read more…
by Richard Egan
In an article published in Nature on 6 October 2011, Scott Noggle and his colleagues at the New York Stem Cell Foundation Laboratory report on their experiments in which they have derived stem cells from human embryos created by adding the nucleus of a somatic cell to a human egg. Read more…
by Damian Adams
Social acceptance of commercial conception ignores all the hidden costs.
It is often said that we cannot put a price on happiness. However, for those who are medically or socially infertile, happiness has a dollar value. For the first time in history adults can use technology to create their babies, with the only restriction being their ability to pay. Read more…
An antitrust suit is filed against America’s fertility clinics
Competition for eggs is fierce: is it fair?
FERTILITY assistance is a big and profitable business in America. Those needing help to conceive—infertile couples, older women, gay men using surrogate birth mothers—may be charged steep prices by the mostly privately owned clinics. In turn the clinics pay egg donors fees that often run into thousands of dollars. In contrast, an egg donor in Britain can legally be compensated by only the same amount as someone serving on jury duty—£61.28 (just under $100) a day. Read more…
Jennifer Lahl, CBC President—and Executive Producer, Director, and Writer of Eggsploitation—recently interviewed Linda about her egg donation experience.
Lahl: You told me you saw the ad on Craigslist’s posting by the fertility center, looking for Asian egg donors. What made you answer this ad?
Linda: I thought I fit the description very well: Great grades, college educated, great looks, and genetics. The list could go on for all the ego reasons I would want to do this. Read more…
Yesterday there was a segment on NPR titled Taming The Twin Trend From Fertility Treatments. They talked about how various forms of ART have caused an increase in the incidence of twin pregnancies:
Twins, once a rarity to marvel over, are now a common part of American culture, thanks in large part to increased use of reproductive technology. Twins are conceived naturally just 2 percent of the time; for those who get pregnant with fertility treatments the rate is more than 40 percent.
They also discussed some of the health risks associated with twins: Read more…
(March 15, 2011) Dr J traveled up to the Los Angeles area for a screening of “Eggsploitation,” Jennifer Lahl’s documentary on the fertility industry–in particular, the way egg donors are used by the process. (Jennifer Lahl is one of Ruth Institute’s academic advisors.) She gives a short talk after the screening but before the author’s Q&A.
Listen here.
More information on “Eggsploitation” is available here.
Women undergoing egg retrieval undertake real yet poorly studied health risks.
To retrieve her eggs, a woman first takes one set of powerful synthetic hormones to shut down her ovaries, then another to hyperstimulate them to induce a yield of eggs many times the normal number. Whether this is done as part of her own fertility treatment, or to donate eggs to another woman, or for medical research, the process is the same.
Pressures on young women to donate eggs are increasing. AHB joins other groups calling for more and better studies of egg donor risks so that women may be offered a meaningful informed consent before agreeing to have their ovaries hyperstimulated and their eggs retrieved. AHB calls for a national registry to track the health and well-being of women donating eggs, the prohibition of payment for egg donation, and a moratorium on egg donation for research until the long-term health risks are better understood. Read more…
Yet more evidence that Anonymous Sperm and Egg Donation is Over (and not soon enough, if you ask me).
newsweek.com:
Currently, in the United States, you need a license to sell a condo or cut hair in a salon, but not to broker human life. The $3 billion fertility industry goes largely unregulated, offering blank pages to those searching for information where the rest of us are free to access vital statistics of public record. “I’m not a treatment, I’m a person, and those records belong to me,” says Pratten.
On top of the serious risk of inbreeding and the medical and health concerns associated with anonymous sperm and egg donation, we all should be entitled to know our biological heritage for the sake of the effect it has on our self image and identity: Read more…
A pretence of altruism cloaks the mercenary and exploitative reality of this aspect 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. Read more…
by Michael Cook
Congratulations, Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban! They have taken home a new baby, Faith Margaret, born on December 28 in a Nashville hospital. And none of the paparazzi knew — because Australia’s most famous actress wasn’t ever pregnant! Read more…
CBC’s Jennifer Lahl and Wesley J. Smith are occasional writers for ToTheSource.org. Recently ToTheSource interviewed Jennifer.
To The Source: How did you become interested in egg donation? What brought this to your attention?
Jennifer Lahl: I became interested in it as a broader issue within the various reproductive technologies. I’ve been writing and speaking on reproductive technology for close to a decade, and through my work, egg donors in the U.S. have found me and contacted me to tell me their stories. These were women whose stories had a negative outcome, and the donors had nowhere to go. Also, being involved in the stem cell debates, I was concerned with the growing demand for human eggs which will be needed to do the research. Read more…
By ROSS DOUTHAT, New York Times
If you want to adopt a child in the United States, you’ll face an array of bureaucratic roadblocks and invasive interrogations. Adoption agencies will assess your finances, your relationships, and your fitness as a potential guardian. The interests of the child, not the desires of the would-be parent, will be treated as paramount throughout. Read more…
While I was over at the My Daddy’s Name is Donor site, I came across this entry, called Debt and Donation, by a woman who was donor conceived herself, and who “donated” her eggs for the money. Poignant, painful, powerful: I can’t begin to do it justice. Go read it yourself.
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