6 March 2006 - 2:36pm
Ivy League woman's egg $50,000. Ivy League man's sperm, $1200
People are buy women's eggs. The price ain't cheap. If you are tall, with sterling SAT scores, Ivy League, and without a family history of genetically related diseases, your egg can command $50,000.
A man with similar attributes can expect to sell his sperm for $1200.
Certainly the man does not carry the resulting embryo, but with modern technology, neither does the woman. The fertilized egg can be planted into another woman's womb ... at the proper moment in her cycle ... and there is about a one in five chance that it will "take."
Egg cost more because they are more difficult to "harvest." There are risk to the health of the female donor. The procedure may mean she can never have children and some women are opting to have eggs set aside for their own use when the harvesting takes place.
Science fiction?
No this is happening today.
The developments in science are outflanking the political discourse which is getting stale. Harvard Business School Professor Debora Spar writes about the prices of sperm and eggs in her new book, "The Baby Business," ISBN 1-59139-620-4. She observes that contraception has made it possible to have sex without pregnancy, but today we can have pregnancy without sex.
Fundamentalists, among others, do not want school to teach students about sex, yet is this science something that can be taught to high school seniors in their biology class?
In the face of these changes, are the State legislatures even in step with the 21st century? With some 400,000 fertilized human eggs in various laboratories, what does this do to the belief that an fertilized egg has a "right to life." 400,000 "people" is the population of Alaska - enough people to earn a seat in the US House of Representatives.
Can selling an egg (or sperm) be prevented? Should it be prevented?
People who don't want to be pregnant are told they "must be." Many of those who can't get pregnant, want to be. They want to joy of carrying the child. Some who cannot carry the child will pay another woman to carry a child that is not genetically hers in any one - the most startling case being one where a woman of color (Filipina) carried a white couple's baby.
Is this what the folks in South Dakota, and elsewhere, are considering as they grind out anti-choice legislation. Who controls when, how, and if we breed?
Is seems the market forces have already shown themselves and international boarders are easy enough to cross.
We are on the edge of a tidal wave of bio-evolution.
I hope to be blogging more about Spar's book (I'm about half way through) and hope others, as well, may want to discuss the issues that it raises.
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Comments
Regarding the price issue: Also, isn't it possible for a man to generate more sperm than for a woman to generate eggs, thus driving down the cost of sperm?
--|PW|--
After all, Arizona has made donating an egg a felony:
Where would Arizona women be without the Big Stump to "protect" them?
Actually, if the sperm is donated to a sperm bank, or if it is donated to a surrogate family, AFAIK, the child cannot later seek support from the father b/c the adoptive (intended) parents are considered the child's parents for all intents and purposes.
--|PW|--
Since it is anonymous, it is possible that two children who are biologically related could meet and end up dating - or more. This scenario is not all that far fetched given that there was a sperm bank in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where a number of children were produced and who are now the age that they might meet.
Though the law gets us out of this one, biology doesn't.
The courts have already broken that barrier with women claiming rights to children they gave up for adoption. Adopted children have rights to learn their family medical history. You never know what might happen down the line, legally.
After all, these politicians are in orgiastic frenzy writing laws relating to reproduction. The government seems to claim ownership on all human reproduction these days.
Once again, men want to control women's bodies. Whether it is in the bedroom or the legislature, the Arizona legislature - the majority men along with women who play the male power game - are denying women a CHOICE! But ironically this time it is under the guise of protecting a woman's "health."
Notice that the ban is not on harvesting eggs. The ban is on selling them. Yet in the 1942 case, Skinner v. Oklahoma it would seem the right to reproduce is guaranteed.
What a strange landscape - in South Dakota demanding raped women they must bare a child against their will, while in Arizona telling others that they cannot sell their eggs.
Already penny wit has threatened to sue Matsu for gobs of money if she fails carry the child to term. To get just compensation she goes from the "dollar" of consideration to the going rate of $50,000 for her egg. But now the Arizonans are going to fine her $150,000 that. Matsu can't win for losing.
I think at bottom, what troubles men is that once they leave their seed, women are "uppity" and seem to want to make their own decisions and this gets men where they live. They are outraged that someone will tamper with "master's property."
Protection, prosmection. It's all about male insecurities. You don't need to be Sigmund Freud to know a clear case of vagina envy when you see it.