Sex Cells: The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm (20 page)

Rene: So when did that change for you? How did that change from being about the money?

Carla: I think it was just [
pause
]. I talked to [the founder]. I didn’t have many questions, because my mom and dad are in the medical field. But I asked her: “Besides the fact that they can’t get pregnant or whatever it is, why do they have to go this far?” She explained that most recipients are women who are forty and above who don’t actually produce eggs anymore. That blew me away. I had not even thought of that! After learning that, I started changing the perspective on it and putting it into more of a medical need, as opposed to just money. Don’t get me wrong, I took it and spent it. But it became less of a second job and more of an I’m-helping-somebody feeling, if that makes any sense. But it was pretty soon into it, almost from the beginning. Obviously the first was the $5,000.

Pushing the focus on recipients a step further, some egg agencies allow donors to meet with them in person if both parties agree. Whereas Carla empathized with recipients because of her own efforts to become pregnant, Jane, a younger donor who did not have children, nevertheless echoed Carla in describing the shift in her “mentality” after meeting the recipients during her first cycle.

When [the founder of Creative Beginnings] found my recipient couple, I was still like, okay I got a match, and I’m going to get my money, right? And then I met the couple. They were
so
nice, and they liked me so much. After that, I felt so flattered. I didn’t realize what getting a match meant, and then it was just like, wow, they want their child to look like me or to be like me, right? They were always concerned about me, always asked if I needed anything. Then after all they had given me, I mean moneywise, on the day of my egg retrieval the husband came and gave me a present. They were so appreciative, and they gave me a card. I didn’t know what to do, because I’m really shy with people I don’t know. I’m just like, “Oh, thank you!” I read the card later, and it said, “Thank you for helping us create our family.” I was just so touched, and after that I changed my whole mentality about this is my job. I really thought I’m really helping someone and really having a great impact on someone’s life.

In subsequent cycles, Jane negotiated higher fees by threatening to defect to another egg agency, but her strong interest in the money does not preclude considering donation to be “helping someone.”

Jane was saving the money from egg donation to pay off student loans when she graduates. In contrast, Susan, who was divorced with a three-year-old son, needed it to cover basic living expenses. Her sister had donated at Gametes Inc. and encouraged Susan to follow in her footsteps. But Susan initially resisted, because she was worried about “messing with [my body] and not being able to have kids again.” Eventually, though, she said she needed to “catch up on my bills.” She explained, “I had my own house, and I didn’t get any child support. Once you’re a mother, you do whatever it takes, so I masked one problem with the next. We have to have electricity, and it’s $100 this month, but if I pay $50, they’ll keep it on. Things just built up and built up. Car insurance is due, but [my son] has got to have Christmas.”

Despite her overwhelming need for the money, Susan nevertheless described receiving a gift from the recipients, whom she never met, as completely changing her mindset about paid donation.

Susan: The thing that just melted me and still does until this day—I don’t know who these people were; they don’t know who I am—when I went in for the retrieval, the office staff was great, and my recipients had dropped off a gift. It was a children’s book. In it, she wrote a note: “You have no idea what you’ve done for us.” At that moment, it became everything about this couple that is just so desperate to have a child that they’ll do this. I’m so blessed that, honestly, I didn’t even try to have a child [
laughs
], and these people are just destitute to have a baby. I gave the book to my child, and he wants to read it all the time. He says, “Mama, where did you get this book?” And I say, “A special friend gave this to Mommy.”

Rene: They gave you this gift, and it became all about them. In your mind, what was it about before that?

Susan: I thought about it as helping someone out, and also, I will be completely honest, I’m a single mother, and I was significantly paid for this. Significantly. I thought, wow, this could help us, too, you know. But then, at that moment, it became absolutely nothing about the money, somewhat a guilty feeling about the money. Why should they have to pay like this to have a child?

Although most egg donation programs provide women with basic information about the outcome of their donation (i.e., whether the recipient becomes pregnant), Gametes Inc. does not. This policy irked most of the donors there, and Susan used gift rhetoric in saying of her recipients, “Do I want to know when she has it? No. Do I want to know what it is? I’d be real uneasy about that. But I do want to know that they did receive a gift from this, that they didn’t just give and give and give and not get anything back.”

Like Susan, about a third of the women reported receiving a present, either from recipients or program staff. Valerie said that after her first donation at Gametes Inc., the staffers gave her “a little Fabergé egg as a gift. It’s cute. The second time, they gave me a little heart.” Lisa received a postcard from OvaCorp at Christmas saying “what a great gift.” But even women who did not receive a present used the language of the gift in describing donation, demonstrating that an actual gift exchange need not exist for women to invoke this rhetoric.

Alongside the gift talk and gift exchange, women do receive thousands of dollars, and some egg donors deal with this seeming incongruity by referencing the importance of donating for the “right reasons.” Samantha, a two-time donor who used the money to pay for school, hopes that egg agencies “screen for someone who really cares about it, not just they want to do it for the money. Me and the recipient, we’ll always have a small little connection, even though we never met, from what I was able to give her physically. I just don’t think [people] think of it like that. They think of it as maybe something too medical or maybe too impersonal.” Indeed, many of the egg donors referenced similar
feelings of “caring” about recipients and sympathized with how difficult it must be to go through infertility. All but one of the women specifically said they “hoped” recipients became pregnant, compared to just a handful of the men (who tended to be those who signed on to help others).

Beth, a six-time donor who was matched for a seventh cycle, was among the most adamant about the importance of being properly motivated. In addition to working as a nanny, she was also a program assistant at OvaCorp, so she was well aware of the fees she could command. But Beth was not comfortable with “putting a price on it.” She explained “I always let [the donor manager] work it out, whatever the couple can afford. I don’t ask for a number, because that just doesn’t seem right. It just cheapens it. It makes it seem like you’re more interested in the money than actually helping the couple.”

In the case of one of her recipients, Beth demonstrated just how invested she was in “helping the couple.” She described how “Kate, and her husband, Frank, she wants a baby in the worst way. She’s a perfect match, nationality, looks, everything. It’s almost like we could be sisters.” After meeting with them for the first time, Beth agreed to reduce her fee from $10,000 to $6,000 so they could afford it. “It’s unheard of that you’d go down to 4,000 [dollars], but I just wanted to help her.” The cycle was not successful. “Unfortunately, [Kate] didn’t get pregnant, because her [uterine] lining wasn’t ready.” So Beth agreed to participate in an egg freezing experiment, for which she would receive $5,000, and “worked it out so Kate can get some of my eggs for free from the [experiment]. She’s just a loving person. She really deserves to have a baby. They just can’t afford it. It’s expensive, and they’re like middle-class, working, regular Joes.” In interview after interview, egg donors emphasized how much they care—not about the money they were making but about the recipients they were helping.

Most significant, though, is the lack of employment rhetoric in women’s discussions of donation. Even Tiffany, who was quite straightforward in discussing her strong interest in the money, still did not call donation a job. She had been matched with her first recipient, whom she was to meet the following week, but she had not yet started injections and had had limited contact with the staff at the egg agency. At this early stage in the process, she had not had much exposure to the organizational framing
of egg donation as a gift, and she described money as her “number one” reason for donating. At the same time, she felt that she was “giving something to someone that they can’t have for themselves.” Summing up her thoughts, she concluded, “When you think about it in the long run after it’s done, I think you’re going to be thinking more about how much good you’re doing rather than how much money you made.”

Simply put, women do not believe that being paid to donate constitutes a job, and the presence of monetary exchange is not incongruous with calling donation a gift. Pam, a twenty-seven-year-old who was in nursing school and occasionally worked as a nanny, explained the distinction between paid donation and a job.

[Egg donation] doesn’t feel like a job. It’s sort of like a process that you choose to undergo, and at the end, you get compensated because you’ve gone through all the trouble. It doesn’t feel earned I guess. I didn’t feel like I was working for a paycheck in this case. It almost felt like here’s a little gift at the end to thank you for the trouble you’ve gone through. I don’t know. That sounds weird to me now that I say it. I think it’s because I’ve never put it into words before.

Several other women also discussed the importance of “choosing” to donate in distinguishing it from a job, suggesting a new instantiation of feminist pro-choice rhetoric. In making the choice to help recipients have children and in being compensated for their efforts, women articulate a conceptualization of donation that directly reflects the organizational framing of egg donation as a gift, a framing that relies heavily on gendered stereotypes of women as selfless, caring, and focused on relationships and family.

Men, in contrast, talked much less about recipients, did not report receiving thank-you notes and gifts, and did not make distinctions about donating for the right reasons. Instead, sperm donors mirror the banks’ organizational framing in defining donation as a job, referencing the money, the routine deposits they must make, and the necessity of producing passable samples. Mike, who was working at several low-wage service jobs and donating two or three times a week, said,

[Sperm donation is] just something to make some money off of now. I don’t get a whole lot of money from my parents anymore, just because they’re going through a divorce and having financial trouble themselves. I’m trying to go to school to be a nurse, too. I have to study a lot, and there’s not a job where I can come and make ninety bucks in half an hour. Anywhere else, I wouldn’t be able to work around my school schedule. That’s why I kept coming, because it’s just a lot of money. I’m, like, a lifeguard, too, and I have a bunch of different other jobs. I make the most money coming here, but I treat this just like I would treat any other job.

Similarly, Kyle compared sperm donation with his other job where he works full-time. He described being a donor as “the easiest job I’ve ever had. I put in probably an hour a week, I don’t break a sweat, I’m not doing manual labor, and I make almost as much as working forty-five hours a week loading trucks.”

Paul, a college student who held part-time jobs, said that donation is not hard work but pointed to the money he receives in defining it as a “side job.”

When I talk to people and make a reference to [sperm donation] as being a job, it’s sort of joking. It’s not really a job. I wouldn’t really call it recreation [
laughs
]. I don’t know. I guess it would be considered like maybe a little side job, because you do get paid for it. It’s not really hard work or anything. It’s not like you have to put in long hours in order to come here [
laughs
]. So it’s not a job in the traditional sense of the word at all but maybe just a little side job.

In contrast to women, men reference the payment they receive in conceptualizing donation as a form of employment. Although not exactly like other kinds of work, the monetary exchange results in paid donation being categorized as a job.

Sperm donors also relied on the language of the workplace in calling the money “income” or “wages” whereas egg donors were more likely to call it a “fee” or a “price,” which evokes a one-time exchange rather than steady paychecks. Women were also slightly more likely to use the term “compensation,” which connotes payment for something lost, rather than “income,” which connotes payment for something earned. Additionally, a fifth of the women, and none of the men, called the money a “gift.” These subtle rhetorical distinctions are in keeping with the gendered organizational framing of donation, and donors are consistent with how they use such language. For example, if they described the money as “income,” they did not call it a “gift” and vice versa.

Several of the men from Western Sperm Bank referred to donation as a “service,” which suggests that this nonprofit organization promotes a slightly different framing of donation. Andrew, who had been a donor for the last eighteen months, noted it “is a great way to make money if you have the ability. It’s also providing a service, making the world a better place for people who want to have children but for some reason aren’t able to conceive.” Referring to donation as a “service” can be understood as a rhetorical middle ground between gift and job. It references some elements of altruism while stopping short of calling donation a gift, and the term “providing” is more associated with masculinity, as in a breadwinner who “provides” for his family. Women almost never use this language of service provision. The one woman who called donation a “service” also called it a “gift,” and none of the egg donors used the word “providing.”