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“You should read this when you get a chance,” says Michael, placing a magazine before me, the pages curled back. I ignore the article for a week, hoping to avoid a discussion of the story, which is about a 34-year-old who donated sperm anonymously at age 18 and was found last year by the product of his donation, a 13-year-old boy. The sperm bank hadn’t protected his identity well enough for today’s Internet age where almost anyone can be found through online social networking sites.

“What if a child 15 years from now wants a relationship with you?” Michael asks, when we finally have the discussion.

“Well, he or she will have parents, so it’s not like the kid would be looking to me to be a mom. I guess I wouldn’t mind meeting with a child to answer medical history questions.”

“But what if he or she wants more?”

“I suppose I would decide then and set boundaries if I didn’t want a relationship.”

“But can we really set boundaries like that?”

He has a point. But I’m more intrigued than concerned by this scenario. I hate to admit it, but I find the drama appealing. As an adolescent, my best friend told me her family secret: Her older sister had birthed a child as a teen and given it up for adoption. As I gasped in shock, imagining this baby out there with some other family, I was silently wishing my family had some kind of parallel mystery. I pondered the possibility of a long-hidden sibling showing up at our door one day, making our lives suddenly interesting.

I can tell that Michael is not keen on our lives suddenly becoming interesting in that way.

~

A week after the consultation I receive a call. It’s Catherine. She tells me a couple in Orange County is interested in me. I’m shocked, excited and even a little proud. Somebody thinks I’m egg material!

“The couple is even willing to wait until the end of the school year. That way I won’t have to be on hormones while we’re in school,” I tell Michael. He’s standing in our kitchen peeling an orange. I’m sitting on the floor looking at the calendar. I haven’t noticed that I stopped speaking in the hypothetical, but he has. I’ve begun replacing my “ifs” with “whens” as I speak of egg donation. When he doesn’t respond, I look up to see him avert his eyes.

“You feel strongly about this,” I say, disappointed.

“Have you already made a decision?” he asks.

“No.”

“Can we talk about this?”

“I haven’t done enough research yet. I told them I needed two weeks. Let me do more research, before we talk. Okay?”

While I truthfully hadn’t decided, I could tell that he had – and I wasn’t ready to hear him out. I wanted to fully consider the decision myself and gather the evidence, if necessary, to defend my position.

Michael agreed to wait.

~

The next day I consult my gynecologist.

“Well, the procedure itself isn’t very invasive,” she says. “But we don’t know much about the long-term effects.”

Data on egg donation, I discover, has only been tracked since 1995 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but all they do is require the 428 U.S. fertility clinics to disclose the number of donated eggs used in fertility treatments and their success rates.  Data related to the long-term physical, psychological or emotional health effects on donors are scattered, conflicting or nonexistent.

As I learn this, I remember Catherine’s comment from the consultation about nothing linking infertility to egg donation. Technically, she was telling the truth, but it seems dishonest because nobody has been tracking whether egg donation leads to infertility or any other long-term effects.

Only since California voters approved a $3 billion embryonic stem cell research program in 2004 have scientists become interested in understanding the potential dangers of donating. Recruiting donors for stem-cell research has been a challenge because so little is known about the medical and psychological risks.  The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine announced last fall it would sponsor the first study on the subject. The findings were published in February, the same week my donor profile posted to the Internet, but I didn’t know that then.

~

Like most people, I’m more aware of sperm donation than with egg donation. It’s been around longer and is more accepted. Artificial insemination through donated sperm has been practiced for more than a century but was popularized in the 1970s as a standard way to treat infertility. Today physicians around the world provide artificial insemination services to hundreds of thousands of women. Twelve years ago my aunt tried in vitro fertilization with donated sperm. She always knew she wanted children but couldn’t have them naturally. For her and so many infertile couples, in vitro fertilization has the power to make the impossible possible. After three unsuccessful tries, she gave up.

Remembering this has struck something deep in me. Maybe the money isn’t at the heart of this. Maybe, for me, it’s the chance to give a gift to someone like my aunt.

For the next week I think less and less about the $6,000, even as I think constantly about the impending decision. One moment while driving, a feeling of sureness wells in my gut. Donation feels right. It feels almost like a calling.

But moments later, I’m conflicted. How could I know that the couple receiving my eggs would be as worthy as my aunt? The majority of in vitro fertilization patients are Caucasian women in middle to upper socioeconomic groups. What if these Orange County people are two close-minded, elitist workaholics who think television is a parenting tool? I start to wonder if I’d prefer meeting them before donating. Would that help me decide?

But a few days later, deep in research mode, I encounter the story of a young woman from Alamo, California who donated eggs to a beloved aunt and uncle when she was 19. Now at 30 and a mother herself, she says she never fathomed all the emotional problems she would face. When she started thinking about having children herself in her mid-20s, she began having maternal feelings toward the child conceived with her eggs. Egg donation eventually destroyed the relationship she had had with her aunt and uncle.

Now I see why many donors prefer anonymity.  Not knowing the details might make it easier to detach emotionally. Maybe I can simply imagine this Orange County couple as I’d like them to be. They could be professors, born educators, natural parents. She teaches something right-brained like physics. He’s a poet. Together they’ll raise an intellectually balanced, emotionally stable child. That sounds about perfect.

Michael walks in the room, and my reverie shifts gears.  In this new daydream, I plant an imaginary toddler in his arms. The child prattles questions while Michael, ever patient, explains the world. It’s a sweet scene, a scene for the future. We’ve talked about having kids, but the day for that is far off still.

I have hundreds of eggs that will go unused though. Surely I can spare a dozen.

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