Leading politicians from both parties have come together to protect IVF in recent months.
Former President Donald Trump wants it to be free. His 2024 election rival, Kamala Harris, has repeatedly vowed to fight for access, while arguing that Republicans are advocating policies that would prevent access to IVF.
But a new book has exposed ethically dubious practices in the egg donation industry. eerily similar to the practice of eugenics.
While it’s normal for expectant parents to want their child to look a bit like them, with a similar skin tone and body type, Dr. Diane Tober, author of the upcoming book EggonomicsSome parents said they go a step further.
Thanks to the industry’s unregulated landscape, clinics have huge incentives to promote “elite” donors who are most likely to catch the eye of a prospective parent.
Unlike most of Europe, there are no uniform standards on appropriate methods for the proper recruitment of egg donors and the industry is largely unregulated.
The egg donation industry favors white donors with a high level of education and certain physical features, such as blue eyes, that Dr. Diane Tober warned had “eugenic overtones.”
Dr. Tober wrote that donation banks encourage donations from women who attended Ivy League or elite universities, who are white or of Asian descent, and who have certain physical attributes that appeal to parents. Example courtesy of Cofertility.com
The egg donation industry is often described as a “wild west,” where minimal regulation allows ethical boundaries to be pushed and prospective parents consider everything in a donor, from where they attended college to the color of their eyes and hair.
The ethical guidelines for egg donation issued by the prestigious American Society for Reproductive Medicine are just that: guidelines, and are not legally binding.
Meanwhile, there is no federal regulation on how much you can be paid for egg donation, nor are there strict rules governing fertility clinics’ marketing practices.
Dr Tober said: “Donor profiles are the marketing tools used to attract prospective parents, and those women who possess the desired social and physical traits will be sold more quickly to a wider range of prospective parents than others.”
Parents often scour databases of women in search of the “perfect donor.”
Physical features such as hair and eye color, skin tone and ancestry drive demand, beyond simply trying to find someone who resembles the parents, he said.
Dr Tober added: “Donor selection and commercialisation in the US therefore carries some disturbing eugenic overtones.”
QEugenics issues have long revolved around the donation market, now valued at more than $3 billion.
Among their findings was that white women are paid up to eight times more for their eggs than black women in the United States.
As more and more women delay parenthood to focus on financial stability and achieving their career goals, using donor eggs to conceive is becoming more common.
Older women typically have fewer or poorer quality eggs, making conception difficult or impossible.
Women with certain genetic disorders who do not wish to pass them on to their offspring may also opt for a donated egg to avoid passing on those conditions.
A report published in JAMA found that between 2000 and 2010, the number of donor eggs used for in vitro fertilization, or IVF, increased by about 70 percent, from 10,801 to 18,306.
And in 2019, fertility clinics performed nearly 20,000 IVF procedures. using donor eggsThis represents an increase of 14 percent compared to the previous five years.
The FDA sets standards for medical evaluation of egg donors and their testing to prevent disease transmission, but there are no comprehensive federal laws specifically regulating all aspects of egg donation, leaving states to implement their own regulations.
To gather donations (a misnomer given that some donations can earn women more than $100,000), egg donation banks often advertise on elite college campuses, even in school newspapers.
A Yale University student named Jessica Cohen came across an ad in the Yale Daily News posted on behalf of a couple seeking “a young woman over 5’2″, of Jewish descent, athletic, with a minimum combined SAT score of 1500, and attractive.”
Ms. Cohen, who detailed her experience for The Atlantic In 2002, she responded to the ad and contacted Michelle and David, who asked her about her educational and religious background, as well as photographs.
As part of this effort, Ms. Cohen was allowed access to a database containing about 300 potential donors.
Parents can look for a variety of desirable characteristics, “narrowing the group as much as they like based on ethnicity, religion at birth, state of residence, hair color, eye color, height and weight.”
In the end, Michelle and David rejected her as a donor. David emailed her: “I showed the pictures to (my wife) this morning. Personally, I think you look great. She said no.”
In another story published in the Guardian From Ellie Houghtaling, regarding potential donors, she learned that egg donation banks are very selective in accepting donations, discarding those that do not meet certain criteria.
Ms Houghtaling said the clinic assessed more than just her predisposition to genetic disorders: “They also weighed other attributes – my blonde hair, my blue eyes and my fair skin.
‘During casting calls, team members would subtly compliment me and affirm descriptions of my body, personality, and Ivy League education. Overall, I worried that this was uninhibited eugenics.’