6B Wednesday, September 5,2012 The Statement
EGG FREEZING
From Page 5B
age and a dating service, egg donation agen-
cies help with the in-between steps involved
in the donation process: litigation, travel
arrangements, donor screening, hormonal
monitoring, education, emotional support
and more. The agency a donor or a recipi-
ent couple ultimately chooses can "lend you
insight and skills that will not only ease the
process but also help you focus on the things
most important to your cycle's success,"
according to a book published in.2010 called
"The Insider's Guide to Egg Donation."
"The way that (Mitzi) had approached the
process, I was much more comfortable doing
it," Kaitlin said of her experiences donat-
ing under Heineman. By law, egg donors'
full names. cannot be disclosed for fear that
the recipient couple would find out. "It was
something that I knew nothing about, and
was about to go into it completely blindsided,
and she made me really comfortable."
The.question is, if Mersol-Barg's predic-
tion that egg donation agencies would even-
tually go extinct was to come true, would
reproductive clinics be able to take up the
slack?
Kyla, a veteran egg donor who has been
treated at three different reproductive clin-
ics, doesn't think so.
"When you're the donor, the doctors don't
seem to care much about you," she said.
"They're usually like, 'OK, do this. and this
and this,' but they don't really give you a rea-
son for it."
"You don't think
13 years sounds like
a long time, but it's
every month during
those 13 years. Every
month you're not
pregnant, it's a slap in
the face."
-Bill VanDerworp
She acknowledged she was worried that
some clinics would treat an egg donor as
more of a commodity than a patient if.egg
donation agencies were eliminated. Though
such worries might not apply to all fertility
clinics (Mersol-Barg's staff makes a regular
habit of shouting "You're pregnant!" over the
phone to infertile couples whose tests come
back positive), standardization of this behav-
ior is a legitimate worry.
Such fears are reminiscent of the contro-
versy behind the Repository for Germinal
Choice (nicknamed the Nobel Prize sperm
bank), a place where women could, in effect,
"shop around" for their future children's
genes by selecting frozen sperm donated by
a roster of Nobel laureates, math geniuses,
famous businessmen and successful athletes.
Implicit in the disappearance of donation
agencies is the vague worry that egg dona-
tion - such an intimate, time-consuming
process - could be reduced to a similarly
coded financial transaction.
As the process currently exists, egg dona-
tion already has whiffs
of commercialization. In
some instances, donors
are compensated more if
they graduated from an
Ivy League school or have
a certain eye or hair color.
"Dr. Greene asked
about my parents' and
siblings' bodies: average-
height, average-weight,
fair skin, and blue eyes,
and she makes an approv-
ing expression at the last
fact," Catherine Lacey
wrote in an article pub-
lished this April in The
Atlantic. "This is like
a sunroof on a car you
might buy or a washer-
dryer in a potential apart-
ment. Grad school is a
leather interior, a pool in
the backyard."
Egg donors also worry
that donatingto an empty
bank with no certain des-
tination will take away
the personal bond they
feel toward their recipi-
ent families.
"I personally have
always been grateful that
I was able to know the
outcomes of my cycles
and that there was that
personal cunnection
there," said Leah, who
runs a blog called Single
Infertile Female. "I don't
evenhonestly know if I
would have been as driv-
en to donate if I thought
my eggs were simply
going to be frozen away in
a bank somewhere where
they may or may not one
day be used."
Stop all the clocks
Still, the expansion of
egg freezing to a wider
audience contains con-
siderable benefits. Most
significantly, the cost:
In vitro fertilization, an
elective procedure that is
rarely covered by health
insurance, can cost up to
$30,000 per cycle. But
without the need for an
intermediary such as an
egg donation agency cov-
ering the costs of travel and donor screening,
the cost is slashed in half.
There are substantial advantages to the
egg donor as well. If a college student want-
ed to donate her eggs, she could theoretically
- after undergoing the preliminary-psycho-
logical, genetic and drug screenings - start
immediately. Those six to twelve months
waiting for a family to decide whether you're
a "good match?" Eliminated.
Not to mention that the prospect of egg
freezing has opened up a host of new oppor-
tunities for those women who want more
control over their- reproductive choices. A
New York Times article published this May
noted the increasing appearance of young
patients accompanied by two gray-haired
parents at infertility clinics, would-be grand-
See EGG FREEZING, Page 8B
Wednesday, September 3B
the leaders and the worst
newsmakers from the worthy to the worthless
LEADERS
a summer of daily stories
irevealf,~ latopfrom -
EGA BYTI NO
11wi dAM
Jason Clarke screaming aaaaarr
rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrg
ggggggghhhhh like a deranged ape
for FIVE STRAIGHT minutes in
"Lawless."
Nicki Minaj said she's voting Repub-
lican in Lil Wayne's new mixtape
Dedication 4, giving Mitt Romney a
considerable lead in bootyliciousness.
Harvard says that the 200 + students who
are being investigated for cheating, may
have plagiarized their take home exams...
WAIT YOU CAN'T DO THAT?
* Highlight from Kanye West's lat-
est Twitter rant: "I was recently
questioned about the use of the word
BITCH in my music and initially was
offended by anyone questioning any-
thing in my music."
7
* According to Jezebel, cosmetic
vagina reconstruction services are
on the rise. What's next? Foreskin
reattachment surgery?
I n a recently surfaced interview,
"Bourne Identity" star Jeremy
Renner doesn't think it's ever okay to
say the n-word, unless it's him saying
it twice in the same interview.
This July, Ann Arbor native Mayer Hawthorne performed at the Michigan
Theater asa part of the Bank of Ann Arbor's Free Sonic Lunch Series.
* The press couldn't get ahold of
Clint Eastwood to tell him what
they thought about his speech at the
Republican National Convention, so
they told this empty chair.
No. 407:
When Wolverine
Access is down
on the first day
of school, classes
should be cancelled.
-WORST
No. 408:
If more than five
people are walking
to a party together,
they're freshmen.
THE rules
No. 409:
Meet the neighbors:
before it's too
awkward to meet
the neighbors.
On July11, the Library Lane parking garage celebrated its grand open-
ing. The underground parking structure is located on South Division
between East William and East Liberty Streets.