February 9, 2011

For years I have been writing about the health risks and unethical practices surrounding human egg "donation," which often isn't donating at all, but human egg selling. I've worked beside lawmakers in many states and testified at congressional briefings on Capitol Hill. I've done all of this with the direct desire to change laws to better protect women who are targeted to "donate" their eggs in order to help an infertile couple have a baby.

It's not easy going up against the fertility industry in America, a largely unregulated $6.5 billion a year industry in the United States alone, which to date has shown no signs of or interest in self-regulation. And now the competition is heating up, as New York State has become the first state to offer payment to young women willing to sell their eggs for stem cell research.

Enough, I say. Years of writing about these issues have brought me up-close-and-personal to the real stories of young women, often desperately in need of cash, who have suffered tragically after making the decision to sell their eggs. These women bravely offered to tell their stories for the world to see and to force the fertility industry to respond to their experiences.

And what a controversy this film has caused. Critics have called it sensationalistic, arguing that a few bad cases does not a trend make. That's an easy, cheap shot given that the industry does absolutely zero tracking and oversight of women who donate their eggs. Anyone can claim no one is harmed when no one is looking for harm. One student in the Reproductive Justice Law program at Harvard Law School came up to me after one showing and said, "I don't care if [only] one woman was harmed, we need to do long-term studies and protect women."

Others have suggested that the film is a Trojan horse for a more secretive and expansive pro-life agenda. On one blog, an attorney practicing reproductive law expresses "concern about drawing too much attention to the documentary" before she calls the film "a channel by which a conservative, religious based, anti-choice, anti-ART [artificial reproductive technology] group is currently utilizing to dissuade young women from considering being donors." She gets it: We do want to dissuade young women from donating their eggs because it's risky and potentially life-threatening.

But the best news is how the film has been embraced and received by so many in the general public, members of the medical community, and people on both sides of the political aisle. I've just returned from a three-showings-in-two-days blitz in New York City, where Fordham and Columbia Law Schools and the King's College hosted showings. Overwhelming numbers of students had seen the ads offering them large sums of money to "donate" their eggs, but they were woefully uninformed about the process and the risks of the procedure.

At Columbia Law School, one gentleman in the audience who identified himself as Department Chair of Columbia School of Medicine, Donald Landry, M.D., Ph.D., said that he was immensely impressed with the scientific accuracy of the film. I contacted him and asked if I could get a quote to use to promote the film, and this is what he sent me: "Eggsploitation renders the medical risks of paid egg donation with care and truth in every detail and makes a thoroughly devastating case against the commodification of women and their eggs."

Pay close attention to who the critics of the film are. They are heavily invested in the profit motives of the fertility industry. The young women featured in the film have nothing to gain and spoke out of a desire to make sure that what happened to them doesn't happen to other women. I made the film so that their stories would be heard. Thinking about donating your eggs? Think again.

Responses to Open Letter to Miss America:

While I agree with the referenced article in many of its points, I don't think it is blunt enough about the spiritual dynamics of eating disorders. The Fall of Man involves an alienation between the sexes in which each gender uses its characteristic powers to exploit the other. For example, men use physical strength and aggression while women use sensuality. This power play between the genders though is biased in Western society with male aggression being criticized but female sensuality being indulged or even encouraged. So culturally women are understandably more at risk of going over the edge in terms of body image, thereby explaining why eating disorders are predominantly a female problem. The point here is that such behavior should be understood as a natural result of getting so caught up in the female stratagem in the "war between the sexes" that the individual in question loses touch with reality to the point of putting her own life in jeopardy. A provocative analogy would be to compare the anorexic woman who kills herself in a (conscious or unconscious) pursuit of sexual power over men with the terrorist who accidentally blows himself up with his own pipe bomb. Conceptually they are the same. In both cases, the strategy of gaining power backfired. All of the above also points to a huge irony in having Miss America as a champion in the fight against eating disorders. Seems to me it's sort of like soft porn vs. hard porn--- the only difference is not a matter of kind but of degree. Bill Brewer - B. B.

Thank you so very much for the honest writing. So wonderful to see the truths your expound. What a great God we serve who can change us as we yield control of self to Him. God bless you. - Pastor D. P.

Eating Disorders et al... Perhaps you should send a copy of this to Mrs. Obama!!! - A. W.

Response to The St. Augustine Challenge:

The piece on Augustine -my confirmation name - put me me in a period of reflection on him and addictions, whatever the latter means. In my lifetime I have noted, as I did at Mass last night, that in praying for the faithful there are fewer and fewer Christian first names. Evidence of the secularization within the Church I do not remember when it stopped but when we were able to read, little booklets on the Saint for whom we were named came with some gifts. Of course the saint's life of heroism for the cause of their Faith was the main point. Good parenting I suppose and reflecting the 4th Commandment. I don't recall if any of my grand nieces and nephews followed this tradition. With secularization and better education of Catholics within the Catholic school system, over time less and less emphasis was placed on frequent Confession and night prayers. When this was the catholic practice there was less psychosis amongst Catholics as a group than in the general population. Addictions cannot be used to conceal what one rightly knows we are doing sinfully wrong. When one "gut checks" nightly the sins we committed that day by running through the Big 10 it becomes much harder to shout "addiction addiction" rather than "I need to right this wrong." Again we Catholics now fully secularized-except for the John Paul ones-we can also lay claim to addictions as well. Until the inner life is sanctified we cannot change and grow spiritually and alas that is a lifetime job! Thanks for the article. - J. H.