by Marna Gatlin
Today I am worried – I am worried about those who for various
reasons have turned to creating or adding to their family via egg donation and
now might have that option threatened --especially if they live in
Arizona.
The Arizona legislature is attempting to push through two
bills that are coming up in the Arizona legislature for a vote - SB 1306 / HB 2651 (both bills referred to hereinafter
together as “SB 1306”).
If these laws are passed they would impose oodles of
restrictions on those who choose to use egg donation as treatment for their
infertility. And the reason I am worried is that for many couples – especially
those who live in Arizona this is going to strip these poor people of their last
remaining hope to try and have a child via egg donation.
SB 1306 is going to outlaw donor egg compensation that is
provided to those who donate eggs to infertile individuals who are attempting to
have children via egg donation. This bill is going deny egg donors appropriate
compensation and under-compensate our egg donors and discourage them from
helping anyone who chooses to have a baby. And I am sorry – but that’s just
wrong.
Egg donation’s been around for a very long time – 20+ years
to be exact. Egg donation treatment isn’t just for those who are in their 40’s
and beyond. Egg donation treatment is also for young women who have undergone
cancer treatment, who have lost their ovaries to ovarian cancer, or who have
lost their eggs due to chemotherapy. And what about those who have been
diagnosed with premature ovarian failure, or those who have a genetic disorder
that they don’t want to pass down to their future children.
What kind of message is the Arizona legislature delivering by
telling a cancer survivor that instead of being able to seek treatment in her
state now she has to travel elsewhere for treatment because there are no egg
donors in Arizona who can offer her eggs that will help her achieve her dream of
becoming a mother?
You know the UK went this route in 2004. They made
compensation for both sperm and egg donation illegal. Guess what? The number
of egg and sperm donors dropped horribly. The people of the UK who want to have
children and are faced with waiting years and years for an egg donor who will
donate completely for free aren’t doing that. Guess what they are doing? They
are going overseas – to the United States, the Ukraine, Spain, and the Czech
Republic to attempt to create their family. And the people of Arizona they are
going to be forced to do the same thing travel to another state for treatment.
That is if they can afford the expense and the time. If they can’t – Game
Over.
Is that fair for them? No it’s not.
If that’s not enough – this bill (SB 1306) was created to
discourage doctors from providing egg donor treatment in the first place
requiring more informed contests, more red tape along with a boat load of
incredibly tough penalties. One being the loss of their medical license, if the
physician doesn’t follow the new imposed rules exactly as spelled out in the
law. And if you read the informed consent rules – they contain inaccurate and
scary scary language that is put there purposely to be scary.
Now if you were an egg donor and had the crap scared out of
you – would you donate your eggs? I bet not, and I don’t blame
them.
What the legislatures of Arizona don’t get is that our
amazing egg donors who choose by their own volition to donate their eggs do so
because they want to. They genuinely want to donate their eggs to another woman
so she can have that opportunity to become pregnant, have a baby and become a
mother. In fact, lots of egg donors become egg donors because they have watched
someone in their family or have friends who have been directly impacted by
infertility and they want to somehow help.
Clinics already provide the egg donor AND the recipient with
informed consent. They don’t allow any patient to go through an egg donor cycle
uninformed. In fact, by the time both recipient and egg donor have completed an
egg donor cycle they know more about their own bodies, and Reproductive
Endocrinology than I think they might like!
God Bless RESOLVE – RESOLVE brought this issue to my attention and RESOLVE also joins ASRM in opposing two other bills, SB 1307/ HB 2652, as they will place burdens on physicians in their labs that will undermine their clinical care of patients and interfere with the best practices in medicine that doctors practicing reproductive endocrinology and infertility medicine provide to every single patient.
How can you help? If you live in Arizona: send a
letter to members of the House Health and Human Services Committee, click here.
To
send a letter to members of the Senate Public Safety and Human Services
Committee, click here.
To
read the bills, click
here and search on the bill numbers.
Right from the RESOLVE WEBSITE:
“On behalf of the more than 100,000 women and men in
Arizona who are contending with infertility, RESOLVE opposes SB 1306 / HB 2651
because they will burden and perhaps eliminate an effective medical treatment
that has been used all across this country for decades. It is women and men who
are trying to build families who will suffer if these bills become
law.”
If these bills are voted on and become law what’s going to
stop legislatures from other states within the United States to follow suit?
Please don’t say “Oh don’t worry it will never happen” – The United Kingdom said
that and we saw clearly what happened there.
Don’t allow lawmakers who don’t get it make arbitrary laws for us because they think they know better.
Marna Gatlin is the Founder of Parents Via Egg Donation and a guest contributor to The AFA Blog.
I'm one of those who regards donor conception in the US as like the wild west. It's all about what the clinics and parents want, and the interests of the donor-conceived always seem to take a back seat.
It's cool that your son knows his story, and he's probably fine with the whole thing. There are plenty of donor-conceived people that are against paying egg and sperm donors though. Are you intimating that their feelings don't count?
Contrary to popular belief, there doesn't actually seem to be a donor shortage in the UK except for people who get it for free on the NHS. It's certainly nowhere near as bad as journalists seem to suggest. Anyone that wants (and is able) to pay for private treatment doesn't have a problem. Just ring up any private clinic. Foreign clinics are cheaper, but fertility tourism is nowhere as common as people seem to think.
Posted by: ml66uk | 02/18/2010 at 09:32 AM
Hi and thanks for commenting. While I think the concern about possible donor exploitation is a valid concern I think truly it's a red herring. The bigger issue again I feel is having a government body controling my reproductive choices. Right now egg donation and sperm for the most part are self governing -- some would argue that it's the "Wild Wild West" -- thankfully the Octomom situation is an exception rather than the rule. But on the whole clinics follow the guidelines set forth by ASRM when when treating egg donors and recipient mothers alike.
In regards to donor conceived people -- I have a child via egg donation, and are you intimating that my child as an adult is going to feel somehow horrible, or have emotional damage because we compensated our egg donor for her time, trouble, and pain and suffering? (Egg donation as you know is way more invasive than sperm donation). My child knows his story backwards and forwards, we haven't left out one detail. How my child came into the world isn't a big deal because we don't make it a big deal. It is what it is. We focus on the fact that he's here, and we love him. Because we don't make it weird he doesn't feel weird,or odd, or like an outcast.
And what I don't get is why people make it weird. Because really it's a beautiful thing, but that's another post all together:)
I apologize if I misspoke date wise. The point is 384 donors in a population of how many - 50 or 60 million? And how many of those people in the UK are facing infertility for one reason or the other? How many of those are women who have either lost their ovaries or the use of their ovaries to illness? Should those women really be made to wait years and years for an egg donor who will donate for just expenses? These are the same women who are traveling to the US, the Czech Republic, The Ukraine, Spain etc.. to try to become pregnant and become mothers.
Again thanks for responding -
Marna Gatlin
PVED
Posted by: Marna Gatlin | 02/16/2010 at 10:27 AM
There are real issues with payment of gamete donors. It's not just about what the clinics and would-be parents want, but also about possible exploitation of the donors, and also what the donor-conceived people think about it. They have to live with the consequences longer than anyone else, and many of them are not happy that one of their genetic parents became that because of a commercial transaction.
"You know the UK went this route in 2004. They made compensation for both sperm and egg donation illegal. Guess what? The number of egg and sperm donors dropped horribly."
Donor compensation (except for expenses) has been illegal in the UK for a lot longer than that. The change in 2004 was the ending of donor anonymity.
According to HFEA figures, the numbers of sperm donors have gone *up* four years in a row since 2004, thus reversing a three year decline. The 384 donors in 2008 was the highest figure since 1996. There are also more egg donors than in 2004.
Posted by: ml66uk | 02/16/2010 at 09:32 AM