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.