...would be for the couples wanting IVF to adopt a child out of foster care, and then give the extra money they would have spent on IVF to the woman that is struggling financially out of the goodness of their hearts.

That way an unwanted kid gets a loving family, and a struggling woman gets some monetary help.

Only in a perfect (or semi-perfect) world...

There is a big difference between sperm donation and egg donation, the biggest of which is jerking off is pleasurable. The FSH (follicle stimulating hormone) injections that make you produce a baseball team of eggs (I had FSH and it may be safe, but it sure doesn't feel safe) combined with the egg harvesting ritual that doesn't even include a nice dinner or candlelight...

There is nothing sentimental about it. Hope these women are well-compensated.

I agree with kufir77!

There are so many unwanted children. And if you can't do the gene-blending thingy anyway, why not give a kid a home?

"donating"?

Isn't it clear from the context that the present participle we're discussing should be "selling"?

OMG, I had the exact! same! reaction!

View ourself as commodities ...... and no, no one can make you see yourself that way but you.

Somehow this calls into question the belief that we claim to have that people are intrinsically worthwhile ....

Mammon is god and we are all consumers.

1. Does donating eggs move menopause up since women are born with all the eggs they are going to have?

2. Have the injections women undergo before the harvest been linked to breast cancer?

You ask some reasonable questions. No, donating eggs will not hasten your slide into menopause -- menopause is not just the end of your egg production but also age and hormonal changes. A woman has all the eggs she will ever have at birth -- about 1000. Only about 400 or so will ripen and be released over 35-40 years. Some eggs just "aren't right" and never ripen, some have already died before you start menstruating. One thousand eggs is a lot when you consider that -- even before birth control -- a woman who has sex regularly and is healthy,could MAYBE have twenty pregnancies in a lifetime. That's a lot of spare eggs. Most healthy women have far more than enough eggs.

The average woman who is seeking a donor egg doesn't have an lack of eggs. She's too old to be having a baby, and her eggs are "sub-prime". If you ever see a picture of a young healthy egg and an old egg, you would get it immediately: the young egg is pink and shiny and plump -- the old egg is grayish, dull and sort of misshapen. This isn't a judgment on anyone, because it happens to EVERY SINGLE WOMAN as we age. Part of the biological reason is to keep us from passing on genetic abnormalities, like Down's syndrome, by making it harder to concieve when we are older. It's also probably a way of increasing the odds that the mother will live long enough to raise her child -- in most human eras, life expectancy was only about 45...so you really would not want to be having a baby at 40 and die leaving a five year old to fend for his/herself.

If you study egg donation, you quickly come to realize that people (both men and women) are trying to "game the system" by choosing donors who are more physically attractive and educated than average. That's why ads for donors target college girls -- the perfect storm, because it is ALSO a group where women tend to be broke and need money. It's easy to see how this can get abusive, with older monied clients manipulating poor women...it's not at all unlike prostitution, only with ramifications that last far far longer. There is also a lot of irony when women put off childbearing too long, then go after the eggs of younger women.

In any discussion about fertility treatments, especially the treatment of people WHO ARE NOT INFERTILE, I think we need to talk about the thousands of waiting children in foster care, who are being discarded by society because they are not "little and cute enough". When you think about the fertility patients "buying" the eggs of "premium" donors, and at the same time wanting a "premium infant" rather than a LIVING NEEDY CHILD, you get some idea of how really big and corrupt this whole thing has become, in only a couple of decades. It's lookism gone mad.

Do fertility drugs cause cancer? This is unproven, but there has long been suspicion that drugs (Pergonal, etc.) that stimulate cell growth and division may well set the patient up for ovarian cancer later in life. But most people, once they have the baby they desire, tend to cover up or deny the fertility treatment they once had, so the data on this is very weak.

In the case of egg donors, they are relatively young and at low risk of ovarian cancer, at least for a while.

I think by far the greater risk is to give away YOUR OWN BIOLOGICAL CHILDREN for MONEY, thinking you won't care and it doesn't matter (as long you get the money)....only to discover some day down the road that it does indeed matter very much, that you wonder where your child is or how they are doing, and even worse, if you find that you yourself cannot have children later on in life (or you DO, and they never know their biological siblings).

I agree with kufir77!

There are so many unwanted children. And if you can't do the gene-blending thingy anyway, why not give a kid a home?

Because, you sanctimonious hypocrite, you're not just renting a room for a few weeks. You're becoming a PARENT. Here's "why not."

I have two kids from IVF. As usual, you guys completely ignore the male side of the equation. Remember? A baby takes a mommy and a daddy? My wife and I briefly discussed adoption. However, I come from a blended family, with a lot of tension and lifelong problems arising from the fact that the home included kids from two different fathers and two different mothers.

Given this, I did not think that I would be capable of being a good father to a child who wasn't mine. Call me selfish, call me childish, call me immature, and then go pound sand. Becoming a father is a huge commitment, obviously, and a complete redirecting of your life, permanently. Sorry, ladies, but I'm not going to plunge into something that big that I don't want to do simply because it's "moral." Believe it or not, I get to be a father on my terms, and as a completely personal decision, I decided I didn't want to adopt. It's my call. It really is. It's the biggest decision of my life. The fact that you can so lightly toss off a statement that I "shouldn't" want to take this course is scary, and more than a little Orwellian.