Sex Cells: The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm (32 page)

12
. About half the women and men had donated blood.

13
. Ben was originally an anonymous donor, but given that donation was a charitable project for him, he changed his status to identity-release when bank staff told him that people would be more likely to purchase his samples. He did not make this decision lightly, consulting his family and thinking it over for quite some time.

14
. It is worth noting that all three of the men quoted here (Dennis, Ben, and Ethan) donated at Western Sperm Bank, where I did longer interviews than at Gametes Inc. This may have allowed time for these issues to emerge. However, hints of similar feelings also appeared in several interviews with men at Gametes Inc.

15
. It is interesting to note that elsewhere in the interview, Nicole places limits on this sort of conceptualization, stating that she would not be a surrogate mother, because it is too much like prostitution.

16
. According to Novaes (1985, 573), French sperm banks require sperm donors to be married and have at least one child. Men do not receive any compensation, and the donation is framed as a “gift from one couple to another.” This provides additional evidence for the claim that there is nothing inherent in biology or technology that produces particular market configurations, and it would be interesting to examine the effects of this alternative framework for sperm donors’ experiences of assisted reproduction.

5. DEFINING CONNECTIONS

1
. Studies of recipients usually focus on heterosexual couples (Becker 2000, Becker, Butler, and Nachtigall 2005, Thompson 2005, Hargreaves 2006, and Grace and Daniels 2007), but there is a growing literature on lesbians and single women who are using reproductive technologies to have children (Haimes and Weiner 2000, Mamo 2007, and Pelka 2009). Empirical studies of offspring are still few and far between (Scheib, Riordan, and Rubin 2005 and Jadva et al. 2009).

2
. Daniels and Taylor (1993).

3
. Most studies of donors are based on psychological surveys (e.g., Schover et al. 1991, Schover, Rothmann, and Collins 1992, Lui et al. 1995, and Fielding et al. 1998). Daniels (1998) reviews seven studies of egg donors and ten studies of sperm donors. In one of the few qualitative studies of donors, Konrad (2005) interviews egg donors and recipients in Britain, where donors are usually married mothers who are not paid.

4
. Strathern (1992), Edwards et al. (1993), Franklin and MacKinnon (2001), and Inhorn and Birenbaum-Carmeli (2008).

5
. Ragoné (1994) and Teman (2010).

6
. More than half the men explicitly stated that offspring
are
their children, yet just a tenth of the women said this. Nearly 60% of women explicitly stated that the offspring
are not
their children, while just 15% of men did. Another indicator of how donors think about their relationship to offspring is the use of kinship language (e.g., donors referring to themselves as parents to the offspring, referring to their parents as grandparents to the offspring, or referring to their children as siblings to the offspring); 85% of men used kinship language compared to just 42% of women. Moreover, these two indicators are generally consistent. All of the donors who considered offspring to be their children as well as donors who waffled by saying that offspring are
not really
their children, used kinship language. Most donors who said that offspring are not their children did not use kinship language. And the donors who did not specify their relationship to offspring generally did not use kinship language. I merge these two indicators to categorize all donors as conceptualizing offspring as their own children (fifteen men and five women) or not (five men and fourteen women).

In considering what else (other than gender) contributes to these differing orientations, I analyzed other possible factors, including women’s and men’s original interest in donation, the donation program with which they were affiliated, how long they had been donating, and where they were in the course of their lives, specifically their age and whether they had children of their own. But this sample of qualitative interviews is not large enough to reveal whether there are significant differences along these lines. For example, it may be that a donor’s stage in life influences feelings of connection. The donors’ median age at the time of the interview was twenty-five, and sperm donors who were both younger and older were equally likely to think of offspring as their children. Younger egg donors were a little less likely than older egg donors to consider offspring their children. However, age and parental status were correlated (and more of the egg donors were parents), and donors who had children of their own spoke in more detail about offspring. So although there are some faint patterns, it is difficult to tease them out in such a small sample. However, none of these attributes appeared so powerful as gender in predicting donors’ feelings of connection (or lack thereof) to offspring.

7
. See note 6 above.

8
. Although one might expect family members to raise issues of relatedness, donors were just as likely to hear this sort of question from friends.

9
. This is quite common among surrogates, who use similar language to egg donors in making sure that they, too, are not categorized as mothers. For example, surrogates will describe their contribution as “just a womb,” and they also reference the house-painting analogy that Carla discusses earlier in this section (Teman 2010, Teman personal communication 2010).

10
. I did not interview donors at the other West Coast sperm bank, CryoCorp.

11
. Five egg donors reported that recipients had become pregnant (a total of one or two pregnancies per donor), four egg donors knew that recipients had given birth (a total of one or two children per donor), and one egg donor said the recipient had not become pregnant and had frozen the embryos for a future attempt. Three sperm donors were told that no pregnancies had been reported to the bank, and three said that recipients had given birth (a total of two to four children per donor). Both of the men who donated more than a decade before our interview had been asked to make additional deposits years later for recipients who wanted to conceive a full sibling for children they already had. It is important to note that most of the women and men I interviewed are still actively donating, so the number of pregnancies and offspring is likely to increase.

12
. Additional evidence for this claim comes from the interviews with egg donors at Gametes Inc., who were not told what happens with their donations; they are less likely than women at other egg agencies to mention the possibility that recipients may not become pregnant.

13
. In contrast to Carla’s quote above, in which she references the offspring as female, Greg assumes the child will be male.

14
. Gametes Inc.’s proportion refers only to those profiles posted after 2001, when the bank began offering identity release as an option.

15
. Scheib and Cushing (2007).

16
. To doublecheck this finding, a research assistant recoded more than 300 pages of interview text, which I had originally categorized as “gametes/recipients/offspring,” solely with this question in mind. In referencing what it is that they donate to recipients, nearly 90% of women mentioned eggs, but just about half the men discussed their donation in terms of sperm. Almost half the women suggested that their donation made it possible for recipients to experience pregnancy, yet just 10% of men did. Nearly everyone conceptualized his or her donation in terms of children. But women were twice as likely to reference the probabilistic nature of their donation; about 80% of women specified that they were providing recipients a “chance” or “opportunity” to be pregnant or have children, thus demonstrating awareness that recipients may not become pregnant or that the pregnancy may not end with a birth.

17
. Indeed, there are long-standing concerns about paternity disputes in sperm donation, and these are reflected in the legal battles of the mid-1900s that worried members of the nascent ASRM as well as in the lesbian-friendly Western Sperm Bank’s decision to set eighteen as an age minimum for offspring to receive donors’ identifying information.

18
. See Daniels (2006, 11–30) for a brief overview of how women’s and men’s contributions to reproduction have been understood since the ancient Greeks.

19
. Delaney (1986, 495). See also Franklin (1997).

20
. Hayes 1996. These expectations of women are made especially clear during pregnancy, as evident in Elizabeth Armstrong’s research on fetal alcohol syndrome (2003) and Laura Gomez’ research on “crack babies” in the 1980s (1997).

CONCLUSION

1
. See, for example, Spar (2006). Then a professor at Harvard Business School, the publication of Spar’s book was covered by a wide range of media outlets, including CBS News,
The Economist
, and the
New England Journal of Medicine
. In what was deemed a provocative thesis, she contends that there is a “flourishing market for both children and their component parts. . . . [This book] does not insist that this market is either good or evil. It simply argues that it exists” (xv). Chapter by chapter, Spar investigated the structure of the “baby trade,” from adoption to surrogacy and egg and sperm donation.

[E]very day, in nearly every country, infants and children are indeed being sold. . . . Understandably, most of these transactions appear to be above or beyond the market. Orphaned children, for example, are never “sold”; they’re simply “matched” with “forever families.” Eggs are “donated,” and surrogate mothers offer their services to help the infertile. Certainly, the rhetoric that surrounds these transactions has nothing to do with markets or prices or profits. Quite possibly, the people who undertake them want only to help.
But neither the rhetoric nor the motive can change the underlying activity
. When parents buy eggs or sperm; when they contract with surrogates; when they choose a child to adopt or an embryo to implant, they are doing business. Firms are making money, customers are making choices, and children—for better or worse—are being sold (x-xi, emphasis added).

Spar does depart from the traditional view of commodification as inherently harmful, declining to take a normative position on whether the baby business is “good or evil.” Nonetheless, she relies on the same dichotomous view of economic activity as separate from social life found in such classics as Richard Titmuss’ book on blood donation,
The Gift Relationship
.

2
. See Gal and Kligman (2000, Chapter 3) for a discussion of /files/02/13/03/f021303/public/private as a fractal distinction.

3
. Hays (1996, 174).

4
. Collins (2000) and Roberts (1997).

5
. Duster (2003).

6
. Rose and Lewis (2005).

7
. Other related markets include care work and domestic work, which have been the subject of much more empirical research. As noted in a recent interdisciplinary collection (Boris and Parreñas 2010), it is important to bring together scholarship on these disparate kinds of “intimate labors” to generate new thinking about the process and experience of bodily commodification.

8
. Schicktanz, Schweda, and Wohlke (2010).

9
. Healy (2006).

10
. Scheper-Hughes (2001a).

11
. Teman (2010) and Pande (2010).

12
. Ragoné (1994) and Teman (2010).

13
. Logan (2010).

14
. Kulick (1998).

15
. Bernstein (2007, 179–180). Emphasis in original.

16
. Sharp (2000).

17
. Reardon (2001), Wailoo and Pemberton (2006), Bolnick et al. (2007), Full-wiley (2007), Bolnick (2008), and Nelson (2008).

18
. Rapp (2000).

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