Diane Beeson, a medical sociologist at California State University, East Bay, who studies the fertility industry, points out that such complaints are rare, in part because of the chill cast by the haziness of the Canadian law. “If women have any knowledge at all that this is not above board, it makes it difficult for them to complain about medical problems,” she says, citing the experiences of two Canadian women she has interviewed. And as Heather Cox’s case shows, it may not be worth the effort.
Beeson is also concerned about how little follow-up is done on donors’ health. “Doctors have an ongoing relationship with women who get pregnant,” she says. “But these women who donate eggs, they may never see them again. Often they have no contact after they walk out the door.” She notes that donors commonly report ovarian cysts, uncontrollable weight gain, and irregular periods — though she admits her sample may be biased because she is often contacted by women who have had negative experiences. The few studies that have been done, mostly on women who underwent egg retrieval for their own pregnancies, haven’t turned up any clear findings, but little research has been done on young, healthy donors, some of whom go through repeated and aggressive ovarian stimulations. Two lingering concerns are premature menopause and cancer. Beeson thinks the health risks and uncertainties are not always adequately emphasized when donors sign on.
Egg donation has a coercive element, she adds, which relies on both money and social pressure. “There is a very overt manipulation of young women’s emotions,” she says. “Women are socialized to be caring, to take care of other people, to do good deeds. It’s not unusual for former donors to get a letter from a parent saying how important it is for the baby to have a biological sibling.”
ast year, Cox received yet another surprise phone call, this time from a Canadian “liaison service,” which was contacting her on behalf of the couple she had donated to. Although the terms of both her donations had specified that she remain anonymous, she’d never been entirely comfortable with the arrangement. So after the second donation, she’d written a letter to the couple, included her name and contact details, and given it to the clinic to pass on. The couple had in turn forwarded the information to the liaison service, which was helping coordinate their next attempt at parenthood.“[They] asked me if I would be willing to do it again,” says Cox. “I said I didn’t know, that I would have to think about it.” Shortly after, a letter from the couple arrived. They told her how grateful they were for what she’d done, about how wonderful the child was, and how they just wanted one last try at a sibling. They enclosed a photo of the child, who looked just like her. The letter, and the profound gratitude it expressed, made her cry. “Up until I read it, I wasn’t going to do it,” she says. “The letter swayed me.”
She and one of the fathers spoke on the phone. Then the liaison service got back in touch. “So, how much is this going to cost?” she recalls them asking. She found the question mildly insulting — she and the father had already decided she would only be compensated for actual expenses. But the service insisted she name a price, she says. So she asked for $10,000. Taken aback by the apparent shift, the couple began to reconsider.
When Bette found out Heather was thinking of donating again, she was upset. She called around to find her daughter a counsellor and emailed the couple, detailing all that her daughter had suffered. She urged them to meet Heather in person, which one of the men did. The two met up at a coffee shop, then drove down to Lake Ontario, where they had a heart-to-heart. They decided to cut the liaison out of the arrangement and go for a reimbursement of real expenses incurred — expected to be about $3,000, all told.
In June 2009, both Heather and Bette met the couple and their child. “It got validated, the whole experience, by meeting them and actually knowing what I helped create,” Heather recalls. “I helped create a family. They’re wonderful. [What] a very lucky child.” Later that month, she started injecting herself with fertility drugs yet again.
The surrogate, who’d also carried the first pregnancy, had since switched clinics and was now working with ReproMed. The couple instructed the new physician, Dr. Alfonso Del Valle, to be extremely careful that Cox not be overstimulated, and made it clear that her health came first.
Just days before the retrieval was scheduled to take place, Dr. Del Valle counted the eggs in Cox’s ovaries. There were too many, he told her, and they weren’t maturing at the necessary rate. He decided to call off the procedure, saying the risk of another round of ohss was too great. Cox says she would have gone ahead if it had been up to her. She’s glad it wasn’t.
