Only Perfect Women Need Apply

Disclaimer number 458: Okay, this another one of my blatant naked anger posts. Go ahead and click out if you don't give a damn about egg donorship.

I wasn't the product of an egg donor or surrogacy. I was adopted the "old fashioned" way. But I can say from the depths of my being that most of the time I wish that my mother had had an abortion rather than adopted me to strangers, even though those strangers did their best to raise me properly. I can't imagine the violation felt by people who find out that no matter what they will never find out who their fathers were. And that's just scratching the surface of the feelings of rage and indignance.

Here's an advertisement I found in a local weekly:

"Potential donors will have the opportunity to get their egg donation questions answered face-to-face with our expert staff. We will be serving a light dinner. This meeting is open to all interested women who meet the following requirements:

• between the ages of 19-31
• in good health
• a non-smoker and non-drug user
• height and weight proportionate
• not suffering from any medical clinical disorders (depression/anxiety/etc.)
• if you are adopted you must know who your birth parents are for thier medical history
• we require all our donors to be attending or have attended college with a GPA of 3.0 or higher

Compensation begins at $5,000."

How can I begin to describe my outrage as an adoptee at the entitled mindset that encompasses this advertisement? I can picture the CEOs behind it rubbing their hands together in gleeful anticipation. They will harvest eggs only from top-notch donors and reap their profits well beyond the paltry sum of what they offer these young women. Their oblivious insensitivity to the product that results from their industry: children who grow up without any idea who they are or where they came from, produced in a clinical, antiseptic environment without the messy human connections to truth, all so that wealthy, "unfortunate" sterile women can have babies to call their own. To me, this ad represents all that is monstrous about Western civilization: the manipulation, the domination, the disconnect.

My message to women who manage to qualify and respond to this ad is this. Think it through before attending the "light dinner" event. Is money your only objective? A more lucrative way to pay your bills than donating blood? Do you think that your gift to some sterile women will make her happy? If you don't see the results of your egg as it takes shape into a human being with feelings and longings and a soul just like yours, you will go about your life in blissful ignorance, won't you? You had no attachment to that egg. It was the size of the period at the end of this sentence. It wasn't even a zygote. Who cares? I suggest that before you answer this ad that you read blogs by children who were the result of egg donations or surrogacy, such as Sarah's or Damian's. See if anything clicks for you, if you catch glimpses of how you will be contributing to the violation of basic human rights.