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Illustration by Chelsea O'Byrne
So, there I was, an established professor nearing my mid-40s, sitting on the ground at a children’s playground in faraway Finland. It was one of the first sunny days of the spring and I had my eyes closed absorbing the rays. I still had on a coat and wool hat because a typical warm spring day in Finland means just 10 degrees. I could hear a mix of sparrows chirping and little voices calling and laughing.
I was minding my own business, confident my son was safe in this country where even seven year olds are allowed to take public transportation alone, when a stranger’s voice interrupted: “Your son adores my baby.” I smiled, my son has a habit of singling out babies to rattle their toys and push their strollers. I also sighed because once again, I would likely have to explain that my husband and I had not been able to have a second child. I felt the familiar pang of sadness and blame that I could not provide my son with a sibling.
As a young adult, I had consciously chosen to postpone motherhood to first pursue life opportunities denied women for centuries, totally naive about the implications this would have on my fertility. My journey to motherhood had long been fraught with difficulty and pain. Modern mothers-to-be who make crucial choices about their future fertility needs often do so while young and idealistic. I was no different. My choice was to pursue a doctorate throughout my 20s, to build a career in academia during my 30s, and to then try to start a family while not so young any more.
My husband and I struggled for a decade with infertility. Our first pregnancy ended in miscarriage, attributed to my advanced maternal age. Then with the help of IUI treatment, we conceived my son. The pregnancy made medical journals because of a highly unique chromosome anomaly. While the anomaly has turned out to not effect my son, it made for a complicated and stressful pregnancy. After my son’s birth, the doctors said that the best chance for me to give birth to a healthy second child would be through donated eggs. But for many years thereafter, I refused the idea. As petty as it seems, I felt raw bitterness and jealousy toward women who conceived so easily that they could spare some eggs. I also perversely viewed combining my husband’s sperm with another woman’s egg as a form of marital betrayal. I had always wanted to adopt a child, but when I opened that door, I faced another unexpected and heartbreaking reality: that adoption was not a viable option for my family.
Tragically, we had two failed rounds of IVF, followed by a natural conception that ended in miscarriage. Once again, the doctors pointed me toward egg donation, which they said would raise my chances of having a successful pregnancy and healthy baby from 3 per cent to 60 per cent.
Desperate and unable to come to terms with only having one child, I explored the option. I was immediately hit with the blatantly exploitative nature of the medical practice around buying another woman’s eggs. Fertile women were not giving their eggs away, at least not in the United States. Women were selling their eggs for high prices.
At private fertility clinics in the United States, donor eggs sell for an average of US$7,000, with options to pay significantly more for certain “premium” donors that make VIP lists based on looks, IQ, and pedigree. At private clinics across the country, couples scrutinize catalogues of donors, picking and sorting women, opting sometimes to even pay additional fees to hear recordings of their voices. It is a form of consumerism that turns women’s bodies into shopping malls. Cells with price tags. I could not participate in this kind of consumerism.
It was not easy for me to take this principled stand. Infertility makes me feel a total lack of control in an area of ultimate importance. In some ways, I felt empowered at the prospect of choosing which woman could be my “stand-in.” I felt tempted to design my ideal prodigy. As a white, heterosexual, married woman I faced few barriers, other than financial, to assisted reproduction. However, in my brief foray into the American egg donor catalogues, including one “interview” with a potential donor, I found myself evaluating humans by criteria I did not want any part of. I closed the door to egg donation, resolving to try even harder to accept my infertility.
Fortunately, as I discovered in Finland, not every country has commodified infertility. Back on the playground, the parent of my son’s current baby crush asked, “Does he have a sibling?” My tears began to well. Suddenly the brightness of the spring day dampened. I relayed the doctors’ prognosis, but surprisingly she did not respond with the usual, kind-hearted banalities, trite tales of miraculous “old age” pregnancies, the unpredictability of life. She said: “My baby was conceived from a donor egg,” then went on to tell me the facts of life, Finland-style.
In Finland – where women first gained suffrage, where a woman is now Prime Minister – it is illegal to pay egg donors more than a basic €250 compensation for temporary discomfort (plus the basic daily allowance and kilometre allowance for transportation).
Women in Finland donate for various reasons, but a scramble to pay bills is not one of them. Recipients do not pick their donor but are matched by doctors on basic biological criteria (donor height and her skin, eye and hair colour). At an average private clinic in Finland, one round of egg donation IVF treatment costs around €7,000, excluding medication. The parent on the playground planted a seed in my head which I ran home to tell my husband about. Could I, too, have a child as this mother had hers?
Within a year of my serendipitous encounter in the park, I became pregnant with a donor egg from a Finnish clinic. I have since left Finland to resume my university position in the United States. I returned home with so much more than I initially imagined the trip would bring for me. While this will be a second child for me, it also feels as if a rebirth of sorts. I am reinvigorated by exactly the sort of feminist solidarity that for centuries has sought to make new life opportunities available to women. I am also reinvigorated by a country that values human welfare over patriarchy and profit. I will now have two children in which to instill the principles I want to propagate in this world.
Heidi Morrison lives in La Crosse, Wis.