If it’s okay to buy and sell sperm, eggs, and wombs, then why is it not okay to sell other human tissues or organs? If it’s okay to sell one’s reproductive parts, why is it not okay to sell one’s sexual parts, as in prostitution? If it’s okay to pre-sell and pre-order children via third-party reproduction, what is so wrong with buying and selling children who are already born or conceived?
“Then how are gay people supposed to get kids?” asked a young woman from the audience. I had just given a presentation criticizing donor-conception to 150 students at CSU-Northridge at the inaugural Bonds That Matter conference held by The International Children’s Rights Institute. I thought I had done a sufficient job of explaining that commodification of children and gamete donors dehumanizes people into objects, property, chattel.
“But listen to yourself,” I responded. “You just asked, ‘how are they supposed toget kids?’”
Apparently, for my questioner, the idea of some people possessing others seemed neither frightful nor relevant.
I’d like to summarize my presentation here and reflect on what caused a small number of students to revolt after the conference—going so far as to harass its creator, Bobby Lopez.
Are All Technologies Good?
I remember the first time I struggled to understand the ethics of a case involving reproductive technologies. I was five years old, folding clothes in my bedroom with my mom. She told me that my dad was not my biological father. My biological father was an anonymous sperm donor, whom we didn’t know anything about.
I was told I was very loved and wanted, and this is simply what infertile couples must do to have kids. Our family was different, but we never did anything “wrong,” so to speak.
After a wrenching divorce, I never again saw that “dad” of mine. My mother remarried, and I was given a new “dad.” But neither the first nor the second man ever made me feel safe in my own home. It was clear to me that all men were evil and vile. I truly thought that either they lacked the capacity to love, or else there was something wrong with me; I was not worthy of love.
In art school, at the age of twenty, I sold my own eggs as a known donor. That was my way of improving the system: by removing anonymity, I was making things ever so slightly better. This experience gave me even more insight into donor conception and the fertility industry. I’ve been treated as an object many times by men in my life, but never so intensely as by the female fertility industry personnel who managed my egg harvest.
After founding The Anonymous Us Project nearly four years ago, I have read hundreds of stories from donor-conceived people, gamete donors, and involved parties. I’ve become well acquainted with the issue from several angles. And here is what I’m worried about when it comes to the new ways in which we’re bringing forth new life.
Stories of Third-Party Reproduction Gone Wrong
Having children is currently our only legal path to achieving both genetic and memetic immortality. But having kids isn’t easy. You have to find a mate. You have to look outside yourself and into the eyes of another person and convince him or her of your decency, your desirability.
Third-party reproduction is not only used by the friendly, sympathetic infertile couples of our popular imagination. The cash-money market model of baby-making has opened the door to a broad consortium of terrifying players. Baby Gammy is just one example of how this new model serves predators first, children last. There are many more.
Mitsutoki Shigeta is a Japanese multi-millionaire who recently made international headlines for commissioning sixteen children born via Thai surrogates. He housed the surrogates, along with his children and nannies, in several condos that functioned as holding camps. He apparently has a great deal of sperm stored and was planning to commission at least a dozen pregnancies every year for as long as he could. A family member of one of the surrogates reported that in the surrogacy contract it was stipulated that if the woman were to bear an “imperfect” child, she would be required to pay $24,000 to him, Mr. Shigeta, and raise the baby herself. She would be paid just under $12,000 for carrying and giving birth to a healthy, normal child.
