Because the interest rates on loans are low enough and I have not a philanthropic bone in my body. Not to mention I’ve read that it decreases your fertility later on + is a major pain in the ass to go through as a process.
My weirdass neighbours in law school asked me, though. They were seriously creepsville and were intent on collecting as many “ethnic” children as possible and wanted to add a desi to the bunch.
I think people have already touched on the major issues. The biggest objection for me (although I suspect I’d be rejected based on my health/family history anyway), is that I don’t agree with the idea of seeking out a “perfect” egg donor to create your “perfect” spawn in the first place. The kind of people who thinkthe genes of a supermodel or Harvard grad will somehow make their kids superior people are not the kind of people that I think should be parents, honestly.
I think having rigid expectations for what kind of person your kid will be or should be is just a recipe to make them neurotic, and I would not want my biological kids to end up in that sort of situation…and yeah I think I would still think of them as “my” kids even if I never saw them (which is another reason I wouldn’t want to donate).
Besides, I would rather see people adopting a child who is already here rather than spending all this kind of money just to get the experience of pregnancy. I believe in adoption and intend to adopt someday myself regardless of whether I have bio kids or not.
I would sit up nights worrying about my bio-kids and whether they were being taken of, or being abused, or if they resented me for not being there. If I was going to give up a baby for adoption, I’d want to do it open, so I could at least check out and select a decent family, and maybe have contact with the child later if s/he wanted to meet me. I’m tall, white, healthy and blonde. But I also have bad vision and a family history of insanity. Are these parents going to consider their financial investment wasted when their statuesque blond Aryan child is diagnosed schizophrenic at age eighteen? Will they curse that they didn’t shill out a few thou more for higher-grade eggs?
Deep pocketbooks does not automatically a good parent make. I’ve known people who spent thousands of dollars and years on fertility treatments, and then ended up neglecting the child they eventually got because parenthood wasn’t as magical as they imagined.
Though in my youth I went to a rather selective university and looked pretty cute, I suspect my eggs would’ve been rejected on basis of the many alcoholic and/or schizophrenic and/or OCD and/or diabetic relatives I have. Plus, I’m on the short side.
Now that I’m a mother I’m surpremely grateful I was never tempted to donate eggs. I have experienced motherhood in a deeply biological way, and I think once I had my own kids the idea that I had another somewhere would have been very disturbing to me.
I have a friend who elected to donate eggs recently. Got most of the way through the process, passed the tests - which, she said, included having 12 vials of blood taken and doing hours of psychological exams - took all the drugs, was flown out to have the procedure done. And after all that… she was told she hadn’t produced enough eggs, so they cancelled. Sounds like she’ll have to do it again in a few months.
If the process is that onerous and once isn’t even necessarily enough, I don’t think it’s hard to see why more women don’t donate.
Throw in some toast and we’ll talk. All this talk of semen sales makes me wish I hadn’t thrown my ziploc bag away.
Because then there’d potentially be a bio-child of mine out in the world who I didn’t know and who I would still, personally, feel responsible for. Not to mention longing to know them, etc. Having an adopted-out half brother who I may never know set me quite straight on my tolerance for that sort of thing. It’d bug me, and it’s not worth the money.
I think the answer is that the pay isn’t high enough 
$3000 isn’t a lot for months of drugs and screenings. If there was more demand the price offered might go up.
Is there a lack of demand? I would think there would be more absolute demand for sperm, as more women would want to have “their” child than a child that has no relation to them.
Basically you can’t have sex or masterbate for the period of time you are participating in the donation process. And they just wern’t offering enough money for that to be worth it.
Huh - **jsgoddess **is on to something. What about those of us who never plan to have children? Couldn’t we just donate our ovaries? One little surgery, bingo bango, there you go. I don’t have to take a lot of drugs, and you get all my eggs at one go. This might be worth investigating…
…or not, as I’m guessing it’s probably highly illegal. Still, if things could go that route, it’s something I’d seriously look at.
I never realized it was that compicated. I guess some drugs are involved?
The hormones thing. The idea of “my” kids out there doesn’t bother me…if someone is willing to pay 30K for my eggs, I suspect they’ll be well taken care of. Genetic material just doesn’t strike a chord with me.
But the hormones…I hate it when I have PMS. This doesn’t happen very often, btw. But even when I am a little bitchy and can’t seem to get un-bitchy, it drives me crazy. I think you have to experience it to know what I am talking about. You know you’re being unreasonable and awful but, god damn it, you can’t stop. It rarely lasts more than an hour with me, but I hate knowing I can’t control my mood. The thought of introducing weird hormones into my body…no.
FWIW, I donated sperm for research (and only got $50 for it) and the only drugs involved were the ones I blew the $50 on afterwards. They didn’t tell me to avoid sex or masturbation–after all, masturbation was the delivery method–but they said to shower thoroughly between the sex and the collection lest they get a contaminated sample and also to not use any form of lubrication during the collection. I broke the latter rule, only because my burning penis was begging me to. I was very careful about not getting it near the tip, OK? Anyway, they didn’t say anything.
A friend of mine did donate her eggs in college and I intended to and went through the screening process far enough to actually get matched with someone, but I did not go through with it. I felt bad for backing out on the couple that chose me, but I was very clear from the start that I only had a certain window of time to complete the process and they were unable to get me started in time. I was getting married in a few months and you are forbidden to have sex during the time your eggs are being cultivated lest you get pregnant with the other people’s triplets. I really did not want to be worried about that on my honeymoon, or injecting myself with hormones too close to my wedding day.
The going rate at that time (about 6 years ago) was $2000-3000. A good sum for a poor college student but we’re not talking about a life changing amount of money. I think when you see the huge rates of $50,000 that is maybe one person that may get paid that much, it is not a normal going rate for donors. If everyone got paid that much I think you are right that a lot more people would be doing it. I think a few thousand is much more common. And like others have pointed out, you are making a big time commitment over a few months as well as injecting yourself daily with hormones and the final extraction which is not a cakewalk either. It is not like you go in there once and just have them remove some eggs, you have to synch yourself up with the recipient’s menstrual cycle and that takes time and drugs, and you have to be ready near the end to go in at a moment’s notice to do the extraction at exactly the right time.
Plus you can and will get turned down for many reasons, things that are common among college students like drug use (even prescription) and smoking. I bet they screen out at least half just on the first questionaire.
I don’t want to have biological children, whether I raise them or not. No amount of money would change that. Okay, maybe if it was a million dollars, then I might waver. But not for a comparatively measly 50k, which a “smart and healthy” person should be able to make in 3-4 years on the outside. Also, anyone making designer kids is apt to spoil the hell out of them, and I don’t want my genetic material to go into making a little overindulged Kayleigh or Huntyr.
No way I’d get accepted anyway, since I’m severely nearsighted and that’s one of the first things they check for. Plus regular BCPs made me crazy, I don’t want to think about what hormone injections would do. And plus I am not a blond WASP, another strike.
It’s not always like that, though. Many people simply want a donor that looks like them to some degree. A Japanese-American couple wants a Japanese-American baby so they choose their donor accordingly. There’s no super-spawn ruler of the world mentality necessarily going on there. The donor may get $5000 or whatever the going rate is, but that’s just getting started as far as the recipient is concerned. For that kind of money, no ovum donor service is going to do very well under the banner of “We Don’t Screen”.
Sometimes I wonder if, somewhat like Arthur Dent, I will someday meet my daughter on another planet and be asked for the $50 back.
I’m actually looking into this right now, but am not sure if I’ll go through with it because I have a limited amount of time before I leave the country for a few months this summer. I’ve thought about doing it for a long time, and finally feel ready to deal with the injections and the emotions (mainly because, hey, they’re offerering me eight thousand bucks and I can pay off my car, dammit!). We’ll see how this ends up…