Lecture 7 - resources of reproduction 2025.pdf

The resources of reproduction: eggs, sperm
and wombs for sale

1. The resources of reproduction: eggs, sperm
and wombs for sale
AsenaAB.
2023
1

2. Reasons
•A major cause of infertility is the inability to produce fertile gametes.
•9% men and 11% women are infertile.
•Many men have low sperm counts, or even no sperm at all and sperm counts quite
generally seem to be decreasing.
•Sometimes the problems are not with gametes but with difficulty in providing a
womb to a developing fetus.
•For many sub-fertile people, therefore, their chance of a child still depends on their
ability to secure fertile gametes, and/or a hospitable womb.
2

3. Gamete donation
-Sperm donation
•The first recorded act of medical sperm
donation was in 1884.
•Many women have used artificial
insemination both formally and
informally. Such a procedure depends on
a man willing to donate sperm. But
donating sperm is easy and many men
have been willing.
3

4. Egg donation
•Reproductive technology has introduced a demand
for eggs.
•Donating eggs is not easy.
•-take drugs to stimulate egg production
•-undergo invasive procedures so the eggs can be
harvested.
•Not enough eggs donated to meet demand, coming
not just from infertile women, but also from
researchers who study human reproduction and
need a ready supply of eggs and sperm.
4

5. Anonymity x law
•Two laws have led to a fall in the number
of donors in the world that approved the
law:
a law : requiring the details of donors and
availability on request to the children
a law forbidding payment of anything but
expenses to gamete donors.
5

6. Why need of the laws:
•Sperm donors have been poor students.
•-no desire to be fathers,
•-no yearning to take responsibility,
•-no thought for the future.
•When donations were anonymous they could have cash without consequences.
•Now not only can they only charge expenses, they also have to sign up to be
revealed as the biological father of children born as a result of their donation.
6

7. Anonymity law
•The medical history of your biological family may become
important to you or to your children.
•Some people know very little, some people are not interested:
they have the choice.
•In the past donor-conceived children have not had this choice.
•They had loving parents and grow up in happy families, however,
they know very little about biological parents.
•Sometimes such children will have access to basic facts such as
height and eye color. Sometimes they may have some
biographical information. But often they have nothing.
•Some such children as they get older and have children of their
own, this matters a great deal.
7

8. A case
•Caroline Halstead is a conceived child who struggles with the fact she was
conceived ‘in a Petri dish at a Harley Street Clinic in London.’
•She believes this was a ‘horrible’. All my life’ she says ‘I’ve felt as if I’m only
half a person.’ Caroline describes herself as ‘haunted’ by the way she was
conceived and by the fact she will never know or meet her father.
8

9. “Being a sperm donor child makes you question everything about
your humanity” said Narelle.
•Narelle, knows only a few details about the person who gave her life
•Narelle's student donor was brown-eyed, brown-haired and 5ft 7in, and would have
been paid a relatively small sum. He also provided sperm that created eight other
children; each of them a half-brother or half-sister to Narelle.
•And when so many, like Caroline and Narelle, see someone who looks like them,
they wonder if they’re related
•Each year since 1992, around 2,000 children have been born annually in Britain
from donor eggs or sperm. So the identity crisis felt by donor children is set to
worsen in the years ahead.
9

10. 2005…
•Since April 1, 2005, the law allows donor offspring the right to identify their
biological parents when they reach adulthood, but this can't apply
retrospectively. So many conceived before that date will never find their
biological identity.
10

11. •should donors want anonymity?
•? afraid they will become responsible, legally, financially or even morally, for
their donor-conceived offspring? If so their fears are unfounded. Gamete
donors are never regarded as responsible in law, legally, financially or morally,
for their donor-conceived offspring.
11

12. A case
•In 2015, Vanessa van Ewijk, a carpenter in the Netherlands,
decided that she wanted to have a child. She was 34 and single,
and so, like many women, she sought out a sperm donor.
•She found an ideal candidate through a website called Desire for
a Child, one of a growing number of sperm markets that match
candidate donors directly with potential recipients.
•Van Ewijkwas drawn to one profile in particular, that of
Jonathan Jacob Meijer, a Dutch musician in his 30s.
12

13. One man hundred children
•Meijer was handsome, with blue eyes and a mane of curly blond hair. Van
Ewijkliked how he appeared. About a month later, she and Meijer met at
central station and he provided a container of his sperm. Months later she
gave birth to a daughther, her first child but Meijerstold her his eight.
•In 2017, when she decided to conceive again she reached out once more to
Meijer because she wanted her children to be full siblings.
•Meanwhile, she connected with another single mother who also had used
Meijer as a donor and who told her that he had fathered at least 102
children in the Netherlands.
13

14. One man hundred children
•Van Ewijkstill wanted him as donor but she was alarmed. Netherland is a small
country (17 million). Many half-siblings in the population who are not known to
each other increase the likelihood that the two will meet unwittingly and produce
their own children, which are at high risk of inherited defects.
•She was angry and confronted Meijer. He admitted that he had fathered at least 175
children or more…
•She said “ How do I tell my kids that they could possibly have 300 siblings?”
•…The government ordered all Dutch sperm clinics to stop using Meijer’s semen.
14

15. More examples
•Simon Watson, a donor in the United Kingdom who
regularlyupdates his Facebook site with photos of his
offspring, told the BBC in 2016 that he had at least 800
children around the world.
•Ari Nagel, a math professor in New York, donates
exclusively online and directlywith recipients; he has
been nicknamed the “Target Donor” because he
sometimes meets women in public spots, such as Target
stores, to hand off his sperm. He told The New York
Times that he had 76 biological children
15

16. Discussion 1:
•Restoring donor anonymity will probably lead to an increase in
gamete donation.
•Donor anonymity should be restored.?? The identity of donors
should be registered or not?
•Would you donate your gamete/womb to your sis/bro when
she/he is not ability to have a child?
16

17. Payment for gametes
-Discussion Q2
•Some people believe that this is morally unacceptable because it is a
‘commodification’ of the human body.
Imagineyou are an
impoverished student wondering
whether to sell your gametes to
pay off your debts. Ask yourself
what your parents would think,
how you will feel about yourself
later on,
how it would feel to know you
had children you’ll never know. .
17

18. Use eggs from aborted fetuses
-allowing her aborted daughter’s oocytes to be harvested
•A female child is born with all the oocytes she’ll ever have.
•These oocytes develop early in fetal development and can be extracted from fetuses from about week 13 and
they are potentially capable of maturing into a fertile egg.
•It would be possible therefore to ask every woman undergoing abortion if she would permit the
oocytes of her female fetus to be donated.
•The question of whether they’d even know about their grandchildren is a moot one. The legislation banning
anonymity requires potential parents to be prepared for their details to be given to offspring, but it says
nothing about grandparents. As no child would result from this particular pregnancy, the law seems to be
silent on whether details of the woman having an abortion, but allowing her aborted daughter’s oocytes to be
harvested, would have to be registered.
•Should grandparents be allowed to retain their anonymity?
•Would lack of knowledge about one’s grandmother be comparable, psychologically and emotionally, to lack
of knowledge about a parent?
18

19. Imagine
Last Question
•Your mother was never born. She was aborted.
•Does this knowledge cause psychological and emotional problems?
•How would you feel knowing that your biological mother had never
lived except as a fetus?
•How would you feel knowing that it was a decision made by your
grandmother that had led to your mother’s extremely premature
death?
•Perhaps it would be best never to tell such a child of their origins?
But this would involve lying to the child. Would this be morally
acceptable?
19