The ethics of eggs.

Came across this article, "Trading on the Female Body," in the newsletter of the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. It covers a panel of speakers last November that called "for a moratorium on the exploitation of women through the trading of human eggs." They want "to raise awareness and promote safe research and regulation of this industry."

The issues the panel raised were real, and a little scary. I still don't know how I feel about egg donation. Even though I strongly believe that being a mom or dad is ultimately about parenting rather than DNA...I seem to have this primal instinct to want to bear my "own" children (even though now I'm apparently too old to bear more than one). My thinking is somewhat influenced by this article, "Your Gamete, Myself," by Peggy Orenstein, which appeared in the New York Times last year.

Of course, if I didn't have my son, I'd probably be giving egg donation much more serious consideration. I would want to have the experience of pregnancy (but is that only because I've been pregnant?).

This is much too much to think about on a Saturday morning, before coffee. Which, of course, I'm not supposed to be drinking, if I want to get pregnant again.