Emotional Marching Orders
Kerry Howley sold her ova for IVF. In an illuminating post,
she explains that
my emotional response does not seem to conform to the acceptable cultural script. Reporters call and ask “How painful was it?” and “Do you regret it now?” It wasn’t painful, I reply, I’m quite happy to have had the experience. Awkward silence.
She goes on to detail one particular reporter, Melissa Lafsky, who went so far as to insist that she, along with several other women who sold ova, were traumatized by the experience, whether they admit it or not. Howley snarkily notes that
Lafsky is bounding the range of acceptable emotional responses available to half the population. (Of course you were traumatized! Don’t you know how emotional women are?)
Needless to say, the acceptable cultural views on selling ova are completely sexist; no one expects men who donate sperm to feel traumatized.
If you are strictly considering the issue of giving away your “offspring,” then I would agree the matter is of equal concern to both men and women. However, women are much more likely to be traumatized by the donation process for very good other reasons, having to do with the different methodology used in the extraction process. I’m sure you’re familiar with the method for sperm donation. Let me provide a description of what an egg donor faces - and this is taken from a donation company website with an interest in making it sound as easy and painless as possible, which it is certainly not:
“Donors are expected to have 4-8 visits at the doctor’s office. These are usually early in the mornings and sometimes on the weekends. If a donor is travelling for the cycle or if the Reproductive Office is some distance from her home, she may make 2-3 of these visits at a nearby clinic.
After being chosen, a donor makes an initial screening visit to the doctor’s office. Her blood is drawn and tested for infections, sexually transmitted
diseases, and some genetic disorders. An up to date PAP smear is also necessary, as well as a urine drug screen. The doctor will interview the donor and perform a vaginal ultrasound. Sometimes these visits occur on Day 3 of the menstrual cycle (the third day after bleeding begins).
A number of vaginal ultrasounds will be performed during the cycle. This painless insertion of a wand into the vagina produces an ultrasound image on
a screen so the doctor may monitor the growth of the donor’s eggs on
her ovaries. Blood draws to test hormone levels and vaginal ultrasounds occur frequently during the subsequent doctor’s visits.
Although there is some variation, to begin the donation cycle, donors take birth control pills for about 10 days, then lupron injections for about 10
days, which slows down the menstrual cycle. Finally, Gonal F, a fertility hormone, or another FHS (Follicle Stimulating Hormone), is given by injection for about 10 days. So for approximately 3 weeks, donors receive
hormone injections given with a small needle, often in the thigh or belly.
Donors usually give themselves the injections or have a friend assist since the shots are simple to administer.
Women are born with about 400,000 eggs and during each menstrual cycle the body recruits 30 or more eggs in order to mature one for possible fertilization. During a donation cycle, a door is given increased doses of this maturing hormone so that more of the eggs recruited that month will mature (typically 8-15).
The eggs used for donation would pass out of the body that month and the
process does not cause early menopause.
When the eggs are mature (after about 10 days of hormones), the donor returns for the egg retrieval which is usually done in the doctor’s office and takes about 20 minutes. She is put under light sedation, and the eggs are aspirated vaginally with a long needle so there is no scarring. Soon after the retrieval
the donor may go home accompanied by a friend. She should take that day off work.”
If that doesn’t sound traumatic to you, try shooting yourself with steroids every day for a month and see what the elevated levels of testosterone do to your psyche. This is a highly invasive, painful and medically risky process that requires a significant commitment of time and causes lingering side-effects. For these reasons, and also because clinics often fail to fully disclose the true risks and downplay the process details, are why women are more understandably traumatized by the donation process than men.
Yes, I’m aware that egg donation is a difficult and unpleasant process for women. In her post Howley does note that although it was not painful for her, this is certainly not the experience of everyone.
Women who sell eggs agree to endure these difficulties in expectation of a future pay-off. In most cases, people who elect to make sacrifices in the present for gains in the future are lauded by society. This is considered a mark of strong character, since many people are unwilling to do so, to their net detriment. Of course, sometimes the future benefits end up to be worth less than the costs in the present.
But imagine Lafsky’s reaction had she been told, upon asking whether these women regretted their choice, “Yes — in retrospect I would have demanded a higher price.”. I do not think she would have proceeded to write an article demanding that fertility clinics pay women more for eggs. Such cost/benefit issues are ultimately beside the point for Lafsky.
On a related issue, to say that a person has been traumatized by an event suggests not merely that the event was unpleasant, but additionally that they suffer lingering psychological distress as a consequence. Ordinarily, one does not expect elective medical procedures to be traumatic in this sense. I suffered through a very unpleasant week when I had my wisdom teeth removed, but once it was over, it was over, and I didn’t continue to suffer psychological distress after the pain was gone. Moreover, had the ordeal lasted 10 times as long and been twice as painful, I see no reason that it should cause lingering psychological distress.
Lafsky interviewed these women long after they had undergone the procedure. Yet she did expect them to suffer from persistent psychological distress, precisely because she expected them to regret their choices for reasons that have nothing to do with being payed too little for too much pain and health risk.