A Brooklyn Egg Donor Sells Child for $8000

February 28, 2007

A Brooklyn Egg Donor Sells Child for $8000

In case anyone doubts that there really is a baby market, this aticle might shed a little reality into your world. Jennifer Dzuira, a 28-year-old egg donor from Brooklyn, admits that she does it for the money.

It's illegal to sell human organs. But it's not illegal to sell babies today. According to the article, 10,000 egg donors sell their eggs (and the babies these eggs will make) each year.

Yet many of these egg donors are probably not responsible, despite tragedy that their acts have caused, a tragedy that their children pay for all their lives because they are raised by a stranger rather than their own mother, and they are separated from an entire half of their biological family, their heritage and even their ethnic group.

Jennifer, like many other egg donors, believes (at least at this moment) that she has done a noble thing. She had donated a cell, not her own baby. She says that she is just a "small" part of the whole picture, since this baby would not exist if it weren't for the two infertile parents who wanted it.

It's easy to think that way before the baby comes along. While the baby is just a potential thing, it seems like it's all about us and our own rights and needs and wants. It seems that we can decide what we want reality to be, and when we agree and sign a piece of paper, then that is what makes it so.

Then one day the baby is born, and grows up a little, and we realize what we've done. This is a real human being. This is someone who has a mind of their own. Rights of their own. This is someone whose rights we've violated. We had no authority to decide for this child that it would be okay to take away its real parents and give it to strangers. We had no ability to decide for them that they would be fine with this arrangement.

For this child, Jennifer will never be just a "small" part of the picture. She will be 50% of the picture. She, and her parents, and her siblings, and her family, and her eventual otehr children, will all be the "natural" family of this child. She will always be its biological mother, its REAL mother. She will be the answer to many of the child's questions about itself. And that child will always long for her in a hollow place in its heart, and ache for her with a pain that won't go away.

1 comment:

marilynn said...: WOW; August 24, 2014

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Stop the Baby Trade

Yes, it is a baby trade, like the slave trade of old. Babies have become consumer products, accessories to our lifestyles. They are like pets, those cute and cuddly babies. And like pets, they can be made to your liking. Just buy the sperm at your nearest sperm bank, purchase an egg from your local egg dealer, and rent a surrogate womb. And in 9 months, bring home a baby without a pregnancy, without even a dent in your schedule!

There is supply and there is demand. Babies are disposable: their value and worth depend on being "wanted". As embryos they can receive a life or death sentence based on a screening of their genetic traits. They can be frozen indefinitely, donated for research or simply killed. In the womb they can be "selectively reduced". They belong to whomever they were "intended" for.

Apparently, adults have a "right" to a baby. And before they are born, babies have no rights at all. They can be bought and sold, or traded from person to person.

Even after they are born, some of their natural rights are not recognized or respected. They had better not complain about not having their "natural" or biological parents. If they mind, they are ungrateful. After all, we cuddle them and spoil them and shower them with love - just like our pets.

Well, it's time to stop the baby trade. Infertility is tragic. So is being panhandled by your own genetic parents and being raised by biological strangers. So is being created in a laboratory only to be frozen as "surplus" or screened out and left to die because you are "unwanted".

Children have not consented to these things. Their own parents, their supposed protectors, have allowed these things to happen to them. Adults have selfishly allowed their reproductive urges to trample on the fundamental rights and needs of their own children. But now, as many of these children come of age and we hear their cries of pain, it is time to admit that what reproductive technologies have given to parents, they have also taken away from children.

Sometimes doing the right thing requires a lot of sacrifice. This is one of those times. We need to set aside our adult desires in order to protect children's rights. Let's see babies as human beings who are our equals. Let’s admit that we have no right to harm others to get what we want. Let’s stand up for those who don’t have a signature line on the consent forms, yet who will be forever affected by the decisions taken.

We will find that by protecting the weakest, we are also protecting ourselves. The rights of children are tied to the rights of adults. Children have a right to their own parents; and those parents also have a natural right to know and to educate their own biological children. These natural rights cannot be eliminated, only violated.

Let’s stand up for the natural human rights of children: their right to life from the moment of conception, their right to be carried in the womb of their own biological mother, and their right to know and be raised by their own biological parents.