2023-09-20 08:28:15
Donors and recipients speak openly on social networks about this practice, which is illegal in many countries. Almost 40% of assisted fertility cycles already involve the use of eggs from another woman.
In Spain, more cycles of assisted reproduction are carried out per inhabitant than in any other country in Europe and around four out of every ten of these cycles already involve egg donation, that is, implanting an embryo generated with eggs into the surrogate mother. from another woman. The percentage will grow in the coming years because women are increasingly trying to become mothers at a later age. And that, the relative normalization of the process, means that it is no longer taboo.
You just have to type “egg donation” in the TikTok or Instagram search engine to find thousands of first-person stories from all angles: women who take hormones to be able to donate, couples in beta waiting (the two weeks that pass after completing an treatment until a reliable pregnancy test can be done), curious people who ask about genetic grief (this is what the process is called to assume that there will be no genetic link with the child), stories that end in triumphant ultrasounds, stories – many – that end badly.
Women with fertility problems, many more than men, have always found refuge online. The difference is that they were conversations in very localized forums, which had their own codes and terminology, and now they are content open to anyone, which is changing the way these topics are talked about, which is no longer so mediated by the official account of the fertility industry itself.
“No one would go through all this completely free, because yes, it involves shit,” says, for example, a TikToker who has donated twice in a video titled Donating eggs in A Coruña. “I donated eggs about ten years ago. She had a precarious situation, she earned black money and needed money. A friend of mine had done it, and I didn’t feel very comfortable. At that moment I was only thinking about the thousand euros,” Estrella de la Libertad Macías also explains to La Vanguardia, who has spoken about her past experience as a donor on TikTok.
In the messages generated by the clinics themselves (until recently, they also posted testimonials from their donors on YouTube and other networks, but the Data Protection Law limited this) and in all their promotional material, the altruistic nature is always emphasized. of egg donation. In fact, the law also prevents them from publishing what is charged for going through the hormone and donation process, and that amount, between 800 and 1,100 euros, is not exactly considered a payment, but rather compensation for the inconvenience, which is not few.
Researchers such as Sara Lafuente, sociologist and author of the book Reproductive Markets (Katakrak) and Anna Molas, an anthropologist at the UAB who has been studying social attitudes towards assisted reproduction for years, agree that the economic compensation offered in Spain, a An amount close to the interprofessional minimum wage, is a fundamental factor for donors and one of the several differentiating facts that have made the powerful fertility clinic sector grow.
“The motivation is economic in the vast majority of donors,” says Molas, who has interviewed hundreds of them in her various research processes.
Lafuente, who also registered about 75 donors as part of the EDNA project, which was carried out in the United Kingdom, Belgium and Spain, prefers not to talk about “motivations” because it implies “focusing on the donors and their morality.” . In the project he asked himself, among other things, what they were going to use the money for and what the relevance was. “They were all clear about what they would use it for and that without the financial compensation they would not have donated or would not have repeated. Some donors who at the time approached the clinic without knowing that there would be an economic exchange, upon seeing how hard the process and the time it takes, valued it. It is key – he adds – for these donations to exist. Without compensation, the system would not work.”
Even many pregnant recipients participate in this discourse. Rebeca Badía, a Valencian actress and presenter who is recounting her journey towards motherhood on Instagram (@yosoyovomama) and on YouTube (Ovo Mamá), recognizes that when she was in her early twenties – she is now 42 – she considered donating eggs. . “But when I saw that you had to have injections and hormones, I thought it wasn’t that much money either.” It seems to her that the term donor is incorrect. “They haven’t donated to me, I’m paying something. And if I donate the excess embryo I have, someone else will end up paying for it. “I’m not saying I bought my baby, but another term should be used.”
Badía, who is 29 weeks pregnant, receives many messages from other women in similar situations. “My mother, who is from another generation, sometimes tells me: ‘maybe you don’t need to tell it so much.’” But her decision is to bring the issue with maximum transparency. She has even prepared a story to tell her daughter how she came into the world, written by Noemí Catalán, a popularizer who has more than 30,000 followers on an Instagram account (@cestalvienoemi_mamipordonacion) in which she tells her experience. .
It is difficult to quantify to what extent those who resort to egg donation tell their own children and those around them. Matching (seeking the maximum physical resemblance between the donor and the surrogate, or the couple if there is one) is a fundamental part of these treatments and has traditionally allowed those who did not want to tell it not to have to do so. Families with children without a genetic link or in which only the father provided the sperm are used to hearing comments like: “He is just like his mother.”
Catalina Roig, egg donation coordinator at the IVI clinic in Palma, believes that “there are still many people who don’t tell it.” “We still have a long way to go before people normalize it more,” she points out. In this entity, a giant in the sector that now has 74 centers in nine countries, 31.6% of the cycles carried out last year involved egg donation, and the average age of the patients who opted for this technique was 42 years.
In Spain there is no age limit for patients, but there is a consensus among clinics not to treat women over 50 years of age. Do patients arrive informed about the high incidence? “It depends on the age. Between the ages of 40 and 45, they are still surprised when you diagnose them with low ovarian load and recommend egg donation. In this area we still find a lot of ignorance. Great, divine girls come, and you tell them that their ovarian reserve is practically zero and it surprises them,” explains Roig.
There are patients who stop there, and prefer not to continue with the treatments if they have to renounce the genetic link, although the percentage of those who do so is not recorded. “There are also many people who tell you: ‘don’t talk to me about egg donation’, and in the end, when they see that it doesn’t work with their eggs, they change their mind.”
At the Roig center in Mallorca, 40% of the patients come from Germany, a country where it is not allowed to donate eggs. The so-called reproductive tourism – the term is questioned, because some consider it offensive – represents an increasingly important portion of the sector’s activity. According to the Spanish Fertility Society (SEF), more than 12,000 of the 127,000 assisted reproduction cycles that were performed in Spain in 2020, the last year with data collected, were for foreign patients.
“Eggs are at the center of the bioeconomy in Spain,” says sociologist Sara Lafuente. “Third-party eggs are used to define many problems,” she says.
His position would be to “puncture the balloon” of the demand for eggs, “take a step back and resolve the previous problems that generate such a strong demand for egg donation. Many of the people who end up with these treatments did not want them, and they could have been avoided with public policies focused on improving life issues.” That is, create conditions so that maternal age is not delayed so much, so that it is less necessary and is essentially concentrated in the public sector. Begoña Gomez
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