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$80,000 Eggs Susan Estrich Are you under 30 and over 5-feet-9-inches tall, with high SAT scores and no genetic diseases in the family? Do you have musical talent or sports ability? Would you like to make $80,000 or more for two weeks of work? That's what one couple is willing to pay, according to a precedent-setting ad in my local college newspaper, for the eggs they want. Forget about the going rate of $5,000… After all, how much is it worth to have a child who is smarter than he would otherwise be, taller than he would otherwise be, a better singer, athlete and student than she would otherwise be? At least $80,000, wouldn't you say? Couples seeking to go the fertility route to have a child can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to become parents under the current system. The only catch is that almost none of it goes to the "mother." She is restricted to recovering her "expenses," generally limited to $5,000 for supplying the eggs or $20,000 for carrying some or all of them to term. Story Continues Below
The argument is that the limits on compensation protect babies from being sold; the counterargument is that they preclude women from being paid what their services are worth. When it comes to infertility, the market is allowed to reward everyone except the woman who is at the center of everything, who makes an answer to infertility possible. There are no limits on what the lawyers can be paid; no limits on what the doctors can be paid. Traditionally, only the woman's compensation is limited. Can this be right? There is a couple in Los Angeles who doesn't think so. They are shattering the ceiling on pay. And my students are taking notice. How could they not? But what are the rest of us to make of it? Is this the sort of advancement we should cheer? Or are we turning women into high-priced egg producers and babies into commodities for sale, with designer versions going for higher prices? One of my students came to see me. It was tempting, she said. Eighty thousand dollars is a lot of money for a law student. She could pay off all of her student loans. Of course, what the ads don't tell you is that you have to give yourself shots to stimulate your ovaries, and no one is quite sure what the long-term effects of those shots are. The short-term effects make you feel like you have PMS times a hundred, and your jeans don't fit, and you have to have daily sonograms, and there are risks of overstimulation, which at its very worst could bring permanent infertility. These don't cause you much concern when you're trying to get pregnant with your own child, but they should cause some greater level of panic if it's an egg-for-hire deal… Of course, they don't put any of that in the ad. It might scare some tall, smart girl away… And then how could they harvest her eggs and find a nice immigrant womb to put them in for nine months? Luckily, we women have an emotional attachment to having our own babies. If we didn't, the factories would already be in operation. I fear they may be sprouting even now. The reality is that baby-making exists in a sort of vacuum between law and no law, where the only ones who are certain of protection are the lawyers, not the mothers or the babies. What counts as protection is far from clear. Does protection mean not getting paid too much, or being paid fair market value? Does protection mean allowing profit to enter a woman's equation, or pretending it is simply a labor of love? Who are we protecting, and against whom? My student kept calling, but the line was always busy. Eighty thousand dollars is a lot of money. Obviously.
COPYRIGHT 2006 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC. Editor's note: Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
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