The gift of motherhood: Egg donation in a Barcelona infertility clinic

Abstract

In this paper we analyse the ways in which egg donors from a private infertility clinic in Barcelona try to render their new experience meaningful. Donors are striving to see their action as a contribution to the creation of a particular kinship bond – motherhood in another woman – by means of the abrogation of a bond that also looks very much like kinship, which links them to the individuals that will be born thanks to their eggs. The specific meaning that egg donation has for each donor varies according to her particular circumstances, but the language constructed in order to convey this meaning emerges from the creative expression of several cultural paradoxes and dichotomies that constitute, in themselves, an original and highly significant cultural grammar.

Keywords:

• Assisted reproduction
• egg donation
• kinship
• motherhood
• biogenetics

Acknowledgments

This paper is based on research carried out within the framework of a European project supported by the European Commission: ‘Public Understanding of Genetics: a cross-cultural and ethnographic study of the “new genetics” and social identity’ (Funded under Framework 5 and the Quality of Life and Management of Living Resources Programme: contract no. qlg7-ct-2001-01668). We are thankful to Montserrat Boada, biologist at the Service of Reproductive Medicine of the Dexeus University Institute in Barcelona, who suggested and supported our research on the egg donors' social experience; Josep Pareja, postgraduate student in reproductive health at the Dexeus Institute, who participated in some of the interviews; Pere N. Barri and Ana Veiga of the Service of Reproductive Medicine at the Dexeus University Institute; and Eli Clua, who arranged the interviews with the donors. We are also grateful to Joan Bestard for his helpful comments on an earlier draft and we deeply appreciate the suggestions made by the coeditors of this journal and by three anonymous readers.

Notes

According to the Spanish Society of Fertility (SEF), it is difficult to carry out epidemiological studies on sterility in Spain. The current data come from community surveys, census records, birth rates and demographic surveys. sef estimates that about one million couples require assisted reproduction (source: www.sefertilidad.com).

We have not carried out any systematic observations on this topic, but clinicians have told us that there is a clear class distinction between donors and recipients: the former come from lower social origins than the latter. Relating the experience of a particular biomedical practice with positions within a social class, as Rapp (1999) has done for amniocentesis, is a line of research we are planning to pursue in the future as we include the recipients' perspective in our analysis.

All personal names are fictitious.

We use this term in opposition to subjectification and identification and as a synonym of alienation.