Maureen Nolan spent more than $40,000 in her struggle to have a baby. After five years of fertility drugs, artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization, she finally gave birth to a son, Neil, in 2001.

But the baby that Nolan (not her real name) delivered and nursed is not genetically linked to her. Neil was conceived with an egg donated by a woman Nolan has never met and likely never will.

The donor received about $3,000 for her time and effort. Under legislation a Senate committee has just approved, that kind of transaction will soon be a crime.

The Assisted Human Reproductive Act prohibits human cloning and regulates embryonic stem cell research. It also bans offering payment to surrogate mothers or to sperm or egg donors. The only money that can change hands is reimbursement for direct expenses, such as travel costs.

Nolan is furious with the legislation. She says without compensation, the number of potential donors in Canada will drop dramatically.

"There's not going to be anyone left to donate," she told CTV.ca. "I mean, I hope I'm wrong. If donors come forward just because they want to help infertile couples, that's great. But I don't think they will."

Proponents of the bill say paying donors for their reproductive material amounts to the commercialization of body parts and turns sperm and eggs into commodities.

"People are not for sale and that's what compensation is. It's putting people for sale," says the Canadian Women's Health Network's Madeline Boscoe, who has been working on this issue for over 15 years.

Cathy Ruberto, the clinical director of ReproMed, the largest sperm bank in Canada, disagrees with Boscoe's assessment.

"We're not buying anything," Ruberto says. "We're compensating donors for their discomfort, their inconvenience, and their pain."

A sperm donor in Canada is typically paid about $75. Egg donors receive significantly more. They are required to give themselves daily injections to produce numerous eggs, and undergo a surgical procedure to retrieve those eggs, and are typically paid about $2,000 to $3,000.

Ruberto says, contrary to public perception, her clinic doesn't seek donations from those desperate for cash. The majority of her clinic's sperm donors are in their 30s, university-educated, and married with children.

"We don't run ads in university newspapers, looking for donors," she says. "Our prospective parents want mature, stable donors."

Ruberto says fertility clinics in the States typically charge prospective parents three to four times what they'd pay in Canada. Those clinics, she says, are eagerly awaiting the legislation to become law.

"U.S. clinics are salivating over this bill," she says. "They are waiting to set up clinics all along the border so they can capitalize."

Legislation may force couples to U.S.

Jan Silverman, a health educator at Toronto's Regional Women's Health Centre who has offered counselling to infertile couples for 12 years, is also against the legislation. She says its passage is not going to stop couples from offering payment to egg or sperm donors.

"It's just going to drive the practice underground," she says.

"I am devastated. I don't think they listened to the voice of the infertile population."

Boscoe says she worries that egg donors in particular might not consider that they are putting themselves at medical risk to donate because they are blinded by the promise of money.

"There are many forms of coercion, some subtle, others not. Financial reward is not a subtle form of coercion," she says.

Boscoe says donors need to consider both the personal and societal consequences of giving away their reproductive material.

"These are not just body parts. These products go on to create lives," she notes.

Silverman responds that the suggestion that people involved in infertility treatment do not understand the implications of their actions is simply insulting.

"There always seems to be this idea that infertile couples don't think about the consequences of their decisions, that they're so caught up with wanting a baby that they refuse to look at the whole picture. They, more than anyone, are the ones who think about this stuff every day."

Silverman says the ideal compromise would have been for the government to place a cap on payment. That would have allowed donors to receive some compensation for their time, while averting the "open market" system of the U.S., where bidding wars sometimes break out for the best sperm or eggs.

Boscoe rejects that idea.

"It doesn't matter what amount they are paid. When you use money as an incentive, you are not using free will," she says.

As for Nolan, she recently had a second child through adoption but doesn't regret going through the egg donation process. She acknowledges that some people might find the idea of paying people for their reproductive material to be odd or even repugnant.

"It is a bizarre to have to make these choices," says Nolan. "And frankly, I might have been one of those who criticized the process if I hadn't been someone who had to go through it."

"But I did go through it. And I'm so glad that in the end, the choice was there for me."

 

The Assisted Human Reproduction Act was adopted by the House of Commons on Oct. 28, 2003. The Senate social affairs committee unanimously approved it on March 3, 2004. The committee approval all but guarantees that the legislation will receive royal assent and become law.