Danger pay and baby making
As it turns out, the laws governing some of the most sensitive new reproductive technologies were never really “law” laws. Technically, there are regulations on the books that forbid the purchase of sperm and ova. It just seems that very few people are willing to enforce them. Indeed, the Assisted Human Reproduction Act is flouted with such apparent regularity and ease that clinics have openly posted bus- shelter ads in search of surrogate mothers.
According to t he Post’s Tom Blackwell, Health Canada has attempted to enforce regulations against this kind of behaviour twice since early 2014, after public complaints prompted cease- and- desist letters, but no apparent prosecution or investigation.
Yet anyone who has looked into the matter will tell you that it’s exceptionally easy to pay for desperately desired gametes. While offering cash to a Canadian woman to donate her egg is illegal, there seems to be no law governing the shipments of cut- rate ova across the U. S. border. If you can write a cheque for between $ 5,000 and $ 12,000, designer genetic material is but a Google click away. Closer to home, anecdotal stories abound of women offered comparable sums, wink- wink- nudge- nudge style.
There is a very simple way to fix this regulatory morass and stop the black market sale of reproducti ve tissue: simply acknowledge that there is a monetary value to a woman’s tissue, risk, pain, and time. The government’s prohibitions, besides being hard to enforce, were always paternalistic, denying women the agency to decide for herself whether the exchange is worth it.
The Assisted Human Reproduction Act outlawed the purchase of human sperm and ova in 2004, amid concerns that the rapid advances in reproductive technology would subject the poorest and neediest women to exploitation. Critics presented a dystopian vision of a desperate class of egg donors unknowingly subjecting itself to medical risks for the selfish gain of wealthy but infertile couples.
Much of this fear turned out to be exactly wrong. For rather obvious reasons, prospective parents tend to demand donors who are well educated, with some reports of six- figure offers for the tissue of women who possess the most genetically desirable traits, including Ivy League degrees. More often than not, the donors themselves are trading on their youth and fertility for tuition and beer money, usually at the expense of older couples who have taken the time to establish themselves and have found their own fertility waning as a result. It is, at its most atavistic, a mutually beneficial exchange, albeit one that exposes the inherent problems of a society that rewards women who delay childbearing.
If all this makes people uncomfortable, if it has them envisioning Gattaca- like consequences, that squeamishness is understandable. We think of baby making as a sentimental affair. Add to that the social discomfort with money, a filthy, corrupting influence, and it’s easy to see why the 2004 law passed without much furor. But in this case, holy instincts clashed with the cold realities of the market.
Egg donation is not all rainbows; it involves a series of painful fertility injections to stimulate ova production followed by a procedure in which a clinician will aspirate the womb to extract the cells. The process puts donors at risk of ovarian hypersensitivity syndrome which, in extreme but rare cases, can cause infertility and even death.
But then, we compensate people for taking risks all the time. Occupations that subject a participant to some degree of physical danger typically pay more, which is why the price for ova is comparatively high. What is danger pay, for example, if not the monetization of risk?
Although most critics would begrudgingly acknowledge that the Assisted Human Reproduction Act does not work, it will be difficult to repeal. Largely because it just seems wrong for a woman to be so calculated about her own genetic offspring. We expect women to be desirous of children. The idea that one might see two years’ free tuition as a better trade is a grating consideration.
After all, it was only when reproductive medicine advanced to the point of allowing women to cash in on their fertility that selling gametes became controversial. Prior to 2004, no one thought anything of the fact that men could deposit the miracle of life into a cup for $ 65 a pop. Paid sperm donation was fine and dandy until women began to join baby- for- cash club.
Then the government felt the need to protect those poor vulnerable females and fret over the ethics of artificial reproduction. In 2004 the government tried to shut down the sale of reproductive tissue for both men and women. The law never addressed the horrors and desperation of poverty — it simply demanded women in such situations stay there by denying them the right to offer something that society values.
The results were predictable. Once overflowing sperm banks found it difficult to attract altruistic male donors. Shortages abounded and infertile Canadian couples turned to commercial sperm from the U. S.
Meanwhile, Health Canada established a regulatory agency that languished in limbo until the Supreme Court decided much of the law should be managed at the provincial, rather than the federal level, anyway.
As the bureaucracy flailed impotently, the market continued to supply what desperate sellers demanded, and the law has done not a damn thing to stop it.
Feel free to note the obvious parallels with other failed policies here. It’s time to liberalize even this most sensitive of markets.
Canada’s law against
selling sperm and ova is rarely enforced
… and should be scrapped altogether