There it is again. From the Classifieds page in The Chronicle, week after week it taunts me. It whispers to me like a drug dealer. "Just a little prick and your worries are over. $15,000. Egg Donors Needed."
Compared to graduate students in other universities, disciplines and cities, I don't do half badly for myself. I've never been unable to pay my rent, and, except for one ill-planned summer, I've never had to resort to peanut butter and jelly on tortillas. On paper, I really have no reason to subject myself to the pain and moral scrutiny of egg donation.
But that's on paper. I don't know what I did to electronics, but I know what they're doing to me. For every allowance afforded by my entirely reasonable stipend, my car, phone or computer (usually, all three simultaneously) have staged a counterattack.
This unholy trinity, led by their grand pooh-bah, the Ford Escort, have taken it upon themselves to make my life miserable. In two years, I have replaced five tires, the brakes, the fuel injector, the spark plugs and the battery on the ringleader alone. Lately, the Escort has become so cocky it's taken to creative pursuits, like refusing to track my speed. As of this week the horn has stopped working.
The car's right-hand man is my phone, which has been dysfunctional nine months out of the last 12. While text messaging through a small hole in the screen, I swear I can hear it laughing at me.
Last, but certainly not least, my computer appears to have a psychic link that causes it to spontaneously overheat every time one of my tires explodes. Just three days ago, part of the power cord snapped off, damaging not only itself but also the $200 part to which it was attached.
And then when I come to school and open the paper, staring back at me is the opportunity to earn two thirds of my yearly income through the sheer viability of my reproductive system.
"$15,000." it whispers in italics. "Screw the trinity. Buy a Mac."
I have plenty of valid arguments against the idea. Sold eggs become sold children, who might understandably be upset that their mother traded them for a new computer and a Kia. Two weeks of fertility treatments would probably alienate anyone I might want to take for a ride in my new plastic car, not to mention my neighbors, parents and the entire psychology department. The SAT score and healthy lifestyle requirements border perilously on the reality of designer children. And I'm not so down with a creepy doctor with a needle getting all jabby without any medically necessary reason.
"Ah, but what is getting jabbed in the ovaries when you are already taking it in the a- from the Dell?" the ad says, "Just think of the poor infertile families you'll be helping."
For a second I start to think maybe it's not as horrible as I'm imagining. The families on the Web site look fairly sincere, infertility is a bad lot and, besides, it has the term "donation" right there in the title. Maybe it's just like donating sperm... only involving less '80s porn.
But I can never delude myself long enough to go through with it. Between parents who would rather spend an exorbitant amount of money to "have their own children" than to adopt, college kids looking to bag several grand and the morally bankrupt middlemen, the whole process is fraught with selfish motives. Often, the ads offer far more compensation than is ever likely to become available. Besides, it looks like it hurts.
I'm not sure there's a right or wrong answer to egg donation in individual cases, but considering that Duke's Institutional Review Board believes excessive financial compensation to be potentially coercive, I can't help feeling a little pressured.
Did I mention my microwave sounds like a dying cat?
Jacqui Detwiler is a graduate student in psychology and neuroscience. Her column runs every Friday.
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