Press release from The Iona Institute
A company called ‘Oregon Reproductive Medicine’ is holding a seminar in Dublin today to advertise its services to people who desire to have children using donor eggs/sperm and/or surrogate mothers.
What the seminar is actually highlighting is the extent to which services like this are effectively commodifying the whole process of having babies.
A look at the company’s website confirms this.
It boasts about the “exceptional donors” it can offer to clients.
Those egg donors must meet certain specifications. For example, their Body Mass Index must be within a certain range.
It offers customers the use of a ‘European Sperm Bank’ and promises them: ‘NO WAIT TIME! NO SHIPPING CHARGES! NO CHARGE FOR ACCESS TO A DONOR DATABASE!’
It says one of the new sperm donors customers can avail of is ‘Hoder’ who “is Caucasian/Scandinavian, with Blue eyes and Brown hair. He is 177 cm in height and weighs 77 kg.”
Customers can look through a whole range of donors in a ‘catalogue’ (it is called that) to find one that meets their specifications.
All of this costs money of course. Sperm from a ‘non-contact donor’ costs €195 per unit, while sperm from an ‘Open ID donor’ costs €295 per unit.
Note that customers can choose sperm from a donor who is anonymous meaning the child will little hope of any contact with him.
The website frequently promises to meet the desires of their customers for a child that meets their specifications. The desire of a child for a father (or a mother as the case may be) is not taken seriously.
The egg donor section of the site also allows customers to effectively shop for their favourite donor.
For example, one section says: “Physical characteristics like eye color and hair color are important to many recipient couples, as they try to match themselves as closely as possible. Our egg donor profiles contain extensive information about physical characteristics.”
Note here that while the customers (as the website admits) often want a child who matches themselves as closely as possible, the possibility that the child might want their actual mother and a father is de-emphasised.
Customers who are not able to carry a child (and two men can obviously not do this) are promised the services of a “gestational carrier” who will have a child who is “not genetically related to her”.
In other words, the child will have two mothers, the birth (surrogate) mother, and the genetic mother. But there is every likelihood that the child will not be raised by either mother and may not even have a social mother if the customers are men.
Commenting on today’s seminar, Breda O’Brien of The Iona Institute said: “It seems clear that Oregon Reproductive Medicine are interested first and foremost in the desires of adults and meeting their needs, to the extent that children in effect become the subject of commercial transactions.”
