Fertility News in June - How Gay Women and Men Figure in the Global Fertility Industry Now
Infertility is a hot topic in London newspapers this June, with headlines piquing our interest in quirky solutions and fertility-success stories.
My professional interest was on full alert when I spied a headline in a recent London Evening Standard (ES), which read 'Fertility clinics to recruit more lesbians as egg donors for IVF.
' In short: 1.
British law prohibits paying for donor eggs, which are in short supply, so British couples are heading to India, where there is no legal ban.
2.
Gay women choose assisted conception to become mothers.
3.
Therefore, at one London clinic, lesbians can now give their "extra" eggs to other women in exchange for a discount on their own IVF.
4.
This new source will negate the need for British people to go to Indian clinics that have women lined up as potential surrogates.
This article lauds gay women for sharing their eggs and rejoices that Harley Street clinics can make them available to straight, infertile women.
Dr Kamal Ahuja of the London Women's Clinic in Harley Street, proclaimed "These [lesbian] women are going to be our saviours.
" no less.
I wondered just how they would actively recruit gay egg donors; perhaps by joining a Facebook Group of Gay Women Wanting IVF, if one exists.
Only the day before, the same newspaper took a somewhat more eyebrow-raised tone in an article 'Single men buying children for £15,000 at baby factory.
' The article went on to report that gay and single men, among others, can now do business with Indian fertility clinics, to purchase eggs, surrogacy and babies with none of the constraints of UK law.
The only apparent obstacle is the delay in obtaining permission to bring their children back to the UK, as both governments jostle to avoid claiming them as citizens.
Now people with various reproductive challenges, single or married and of both sexual persuasions will be able to fulfil their dreams of having children, in spite of British legal restrictions.
Both the gay women in the UK and the Indian surrogates derive financial benefit from their participation, the former in a £3,995 discount and the latter in a cash payment of £8,000.
This is the result of medical advancement and supply answering a demand.
All the participants seem to be happy, with the possible exception of those who regulate these matters.
So why is the ES putting a smiley face on about lesbians having IVF to have their own children, as long as they share their eggs with others, but making it seem seedy for single and homosexual men to have a baby by way of a surrogate? There are many single fathers, by circumstance if not choice, who are loving and capable parents.
The ES article points out the lack of background checks or vetting of potential, male parents, single or attached, for the babies born in India.
It is a pointless criticism and confuses the issue.
Is it about their fitness as a parent, gender bias or about the appearance of impropriety from money being handed over? To debate this as a moral issue, we have to look at 1) the advertisement of these payable services by the Indian clinic on their website and the amount charged, 2) who is donating the eggs or surrogacy, and 3) who is able to make use of them; couples, single women, gay women, straight women, single men, gay men, or simply rich people.
Trade in human eggs and wombs in prices well into the thousands do sound tacky, especially on the unfortunately named website iwannagetpregnant.
com, but it is more informational than advertisement.
The article itself brings our attention to the existence of the website and the booming business at Indian fertility clinics and highlights how easy it is to accomplish.
A British person who has tried all other means to "fulfil their dream of enjoying parenthood," now knows that there is a clinic in India operating like an oasis in the desert.
In regard to the choice of donor/surrogate, it seems to be a pragmatic one: within Britain, you are restricted by law to someone else's generous offer or the alternative of finding a loophole: egg sharing rather than egg buying.
The clinic gets the money; the donor gets a discount.
If that isn't viable for you, you can choose to skirt the UK law by going to another country for IVF, egg donation or surrogacy.
The money paid to Indian surrogate mothers is "life-changing" and not exploitative, according to Dr Anita Sone, quoted in the London ES article.
To some, this entire question comes down to a fundamental issue of rights; whether everyone is equally entitled to become a parent, regardless of their physical, legal or social status, gender or sexuality.
All the rest is purely a matter of convenience.
Relating to the first point, Dr Gautam Allahbadia, of the Indian clinic, believes that "...
every human being has to be treated equal and all have the same right to procreate.
" On the other hand, Ann Widdecombe, the Tory MP and Roman Catholic, believes that these practices treat children "as if they were goods," also proclaiming that every child needs and deserves both mother and father.
This is a nice, traditional view, harking back to the idealized families of 1950's television shows, but it doesn't describe today's society in which alternative family set-ups are more common and accepted.
As a former patient of the fertility machine, I don't know how far I would have gone, or travelled, to fulfil my deep need to be a mother if I hadn't finally conceived a healthy pregnancy and had my two children.
The advances in reproductive medicine allow the fertility industry to provide new options all the time, which is both exciting and a blessing to those who suffer childlessness.
Whether somewhat older, single or gay people would make good parents isn't for the rest of us to judge.
Parenthood is a privilege that, once acquired, demands wholehearted commitment, love and care.
It also requires responsibility, hard work and selflessness.
A person who is willing to devote all of that to a child, is parent material, plain and simple, and shouldn't be held back because of the uneven handout of fertility or the nice package of a man/woman partnership.
What remains is my uneasiness with the image of poor Indian women being encouraged to undergo drug treatment, surgery and childbirth out of a need to feed their own families.
The Rotunda's website allows you to click on a potential donor's name to see her photo and profile, reminding me of a dating website at best, or my image of a brothel at worst.
I am sure that these women, many of them mothers, are good and kind with pure motives.
Nevertheless, I feel my personal discomfort level rising in my throat at the sight of the "menu," offering the various surrogates for perusal.
They may agree to participate and be happy for the financial reward; but their participation is born from poverty rather than generosity.
If, as the ES reported, a London couple spent £25,000 using an Indian surrogate, a Gujarati housewife who received £8,000, it doesn't take advanced maths to make out that the surrogate's compensation is the smaller share of the fees and someone else is profiting.
But, does this make anyone the victim? It may just be that the newsmakers are playing on British sensibilities to create the image of bringing infants back like some sort of contraband from a Third World country and former colony.
I would, no doubt, be more pragmatic and less uncomfortable about it, if I stood in the shoes of these Indian surrogate mothers, or indeed those of the prospective parents who have no other options left at home.
What I do know for sure, is that surrogacy is here to stay, regardless of whether law allows it to happen on British soil.
Anyone who has understands the confusion, frustration, guilt, anger and pure longing of an infertile couple, knows that geographical borders and personal sacrifice won't stand in their way.
Whether it's time, distance, finances or actually moving abroad, they will pursue parenthood to their personal limitations.
It is not different for a single person who has no partner in sight and the years of fertility slipping away, or the gay couple who wants a family of their own.
An article that presumes that single and/or gay men are either unfit as parents or impure motives, and likens egg donation and surrogacy to trafficking in newborns does no one any favours, least of all the newspaper's readership.
My professional interest was on full alert when I spied a headline in a recent London Evening Standard (ES), which read 'Fertility clinics to recruit more lesbians as egg donors for IVF.
' In short: 1.
British law prohibits paying for donor eggs, which are in short supply, so British couples are heading to India, where there is no legal ban.
2.
Gay women choose assisted conception to become mothers.
3.
Therefore, at one London clinic, lesbians can now give their "extra" eggs to other women in exchange for a discount on their own IVF.
4.
This new source will negate the need for British people to go to Indian clinics that have women lined up as potential surrogates.
This article lauds gay women for sharing their eggs and rejoices that Harley Street clinics can make them available to straight, infertile women.
Dr Kamal Ahuja of the London Women's Clinic in Harley Street, proclaimed "These [lesbian] women are going to be our saviours.
" no less.
I wondered just how they would actively recruit gay egg donors; perhaps by joining a Facebook Group of Gay Women Wanting IVF, if one exists.
Only the day before, the same newspaper took a somewhat more eyebrow-raised tone in an article 'Single men buying children for £15,000 at baby factory.
' The article went on to report that gay and single men, among others, can now do business with Indian fertility clinics, to purchase eggs, surrogacy and babies with none of the constraints of UK law.
The only apparent obstacle is the delay in obtaining permission to bring their children back to the UK, as both governments jostle to avoid claiming them as citizens.
Now people with various reproductive challenges, single or married and of both sexual persuasions will be able to fulfil their dreams of having children, in spite of British legal restrictions.
Both the gay women in the UK and the Indian surrogates derive financial benefit from their participation, the former in a £3,995 discount and the latter in a cash payment of £8,000.
This is the result of medical advancement and supply answering a demand.
All the participants seem to be happy, with the possible exception of those who regulate these matters.
So why is the ES putting a smiley face on about lesbians having IVF to have their own children, as long as they share their eggs with others, but making it seem seedy for single and homosexual men to have a baby by way of a surrogate? There are many single fathers, by circumstance if not choice, who are loving and capable parents.
The ES article points out the lack of background checks or vetting of potential, male parents, single or attached, for the babies born in India.
It is a pointless criticism and confuses the issue.
Is it about their fitness as a parent, gender bias or about the appearance of impropriety from money being handed over? To debate this as a moral issue, we have to look at 1) the advertisement of these payable services by the Indian clinic on their website and the amount charged, 2) who is donating the eggs or surrogacy, and 3) who is able to make use of them; couples, single women, gay women, straight women, single men, gay men, or simply rich people.
Trade in human eggs and wombs in prices well into the thousands do sound tacky, especially on the unfortunately named website iwannagetpregnant.
com, but it is more informational than advertisement.
The article itself brings our attention to the existence of the website and the booming business at Indian fertility clinics and highlights how easy it is to accomplish.
A British person who has tried all other means to "fulfil their dream of enjoying parenthood," now knows that there is a clinic in India operating like an oasis in the desert.
In regard to the choice of donor/surrogate, it seems to be a pragmatic one: within Britain, you are restricted by law to someone else's generous offer or the alternative of finding a loophole: egg sharing rather than egg buying.
The clinic gets the money; the donor gets a discount.
If that isn't viable for you, you can choose to skirt the UK law by going to another country for IVF, egg donation or surrogacy.
The money paid to Indian surrogate mothers is "life-changing" and not exploitative, according to Dr Anita Sone, quoted in the London ES article.
To some, this entire question comes down to a fundamental issue of rights; whether everyone is equally entitled to become a parent, regardless of their physical, legal or social status, gender or sexuality.
All the rest is purely a matter of convenience.
Relating to the first point, Dr Gautam Allahbadia, of the Indian clinic, believes that "...
every human being has to be treated equal and all have the same right to procreate.
" On the other hand, Ann Widdecombe, the Tory MP and Roman Catholic, believes that these practices treat children "as if they were goods," also proclaiming that every child needs and deserves both mother and father.
This is a nice, traditional view, harking back to the idealized families of 1950's television shows, but it doesn't describe today's society in which alternative family set-ups are more common and accepted.
As a former patient of the fertility machine, I don't know how far I would have gone, or travelled, to fulfil my deep need to be a mother if I hadn't finally conceived a healthy pregnancy and had my two children.
The advances in reproductive medicine allow the fertility industry to provide new options all the time, which is both exciting and a blessing to those who suffer childlessness.
Whether somewhat older, single or gay people would make good parents isn't for the rest of us to judge.
Parenthood is a privilege that, once acquired, demands wholehearted commitment, love and care.
It also requires responsibility, hard work and selflessness.
A person who is willing to devote all of that to a child, is parent material, plain and simple, and shouldn't be held back because of the uneven handout of fertility or the nice package of a man/woman partnership.
What remains is my uneasiness with the image of poor Indian women being encouraged to undergo drug treatment, surgery and childbirth out of a need to feed their own families.
The Rotunda's website allows you to click on a potential donor's name to see her photo and profile, reminding me of a dating website at best, or my image of a brothel at worst.
I am sure that these women, many of them mothers, are good and kind with pure motives.
Nevertheless, I feel my personal discomfort level rising in my throat at the sight of the "menu," offering the various surrogates for perusal.
They may agree to participate and be happy for the financial reward; but their participation is born from poverty rather than generosity.
If, as the ES reported, a London couple spent £25,000 using an Indian surrogate, a Gujarati housewife who received £8,000, it doesn't take advanced maths to make out that the surrogate's compensation is the smaller share of the fees and someone else is profiting.
But, does this make anyone the victim? It may just be that the newsmakers are playing on British sensibilities to create the image of bringing infants back like some sort of contraband from a Third World country and former colony.
I would, no doubt, be more pragmatic and less uncomfortable about it, if I stood in the shoes of these Indian surrogate mothers, or indeed those of the prospective parents who have no other options left at home.
What I do know for sure, is that surrogacy is here to stay, regardless of whether law allows it to happen on British soil.
Anyone who has understands the confusion, frustration, guilt, anger and pure longing of an infertile couple, knows that geographical borders and personal sacrifice won't stand in their way.
Whether it's time, distance, finances or actually moving abroad, they will pursue parenthood to their personal limitations.
It is not different for a single person who has no partner in sight and the years of fertility slipping away, or the gay couple who wants a family of their own.
An article that presumes that single and/or gay men are either unfit as parents or impure motives, and likens egg donation and surrogacy to trafficking in newborns does no one any favours, least of all the newspaper's readership.
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