a good egg

[Ova!]

Yesterday a friend pointed me towards this article published in Honolulu Magazine, written by a friend of hers who has donated her eggs six times. I was curious to read about her experience - I've considered the idea of egg donation, for many of the same reasons she first did: quick, "easy" income (embarrassing? but true) to help supplement a dangerously meager income. There are always expenses that we struggle to meet, and always the background thought that if we could just find a source for say... $5,000... we could put it towards that major looming cash-suck (car? travel? wedding? health care?). The most basic research into what a donation would entail has so far scared me off - and Hee's account of the pseudo-menopausal donation month confirms a level of emotional and psychological fragility that I'm not interested in willfully reaching.

This piece, though, resonated with me - from the tangential perspective of reproductive rights, and as a young, educated woman considering the implications of childbirth and both the responsibility and power of my potentially-life-giving-lady-parts. Hee has a compelling voice, and her account is so personal, so brave, that it is at once "uplifting and heartbreaking" (as my friend put it). And not only that, she is a gifted writer - there are moments of poetry in what could be read as a medical account. Writing about her current relationship, and her certainty that they will never have children (although he wants them), she says:

As much as possible, I keep our love wandering the borderlands of my heart, fearing that he will only keep me until he finds a woman who wants the family he wants. (I don’t do this well; love sneaks in, flips on the projector, teasing me with the trailer from our unreleased future together.)

Beautiful, right?

She also acknowledges her own hypocrisy - she expresses not wanting to bring children into a world that has too many hungry and suffering children already, and also notes that she has at least five offspring living in the world (total number of successful births from her donations = unknown).  Considering that the donations went to couples unable to conceive on their own, the numbers kind of even out - if every couple in the world had one child, the population would be halved in a generation. Obviously that's not the reality, but does Hee's choice to not have a family of her own offset the gift of family she's given to so many others? Or does it just complicate her own role in population growth?