there are so many different ways to make money nowadays!

today in the toronto star they feature a toronto clinic that is now offering what is called "social" egg freezing.

when i first read that i thought it meant that you got a group rate if you went with your friends to get your future embryos put on ice, but that's not what it means.

it means, according to the clinic's website, that you can freeze your eggs. on the lifequest clinic's blog they describe elective egg freezing as the perfect option for those who are "19 and 36 years old, and [who] know [they]want to have a family but the time is just not right. "

is egg freezing right for you? well, here are some indicators that it might be: "You may be building your career; or you may be single and waiting until you meet the right partner. There may be medical reasons as well, such as preserving fertility before chemotherapy for the treatment of cancer. Egg freezing offers the opportunity for a woman to preserve her eggs at the peak of her fertility so she can have genetically-related children at a later, more appropriate time in her life."

the peak of fertility!! genetically-related children!! appropriate timing!!

it sounds so easy doesn't it? want babies some day? well freeze those suckers up now and they'll just be waiting for you in ten years.

they mention somewhere in there that egg freezing is still considered a research procedure and only a very small number of babies have been born from frozen eggs, but who cares? this is 2010, after all, and don't we deserve to have every option open to us at all times if we can afford it? of course we do!

so after some appointments, mandatory counselling, and injecting yourself with hormones for a few weeks, you'll get a needle inserted into your ovaries and they'll suck out your future babies and "slow freeze" them. after that you can go on with your life and not worry about having a baby right away.

it's like this comic says (from the clinic's twitter) "get an education...check! establish career...check! oh my god! i forgot to have a baby!"

yes, women are allowed to have goals and priorities beyond family now. but being allowed can't change the fact that we are biologically DESTINED to pop out babies. the thought of our eggs drying up and becoming useless is an idea that is anathema to us.

today the toronto star also covered the new program designed to provide dental care to poor kids and a story about abuses in a toronto nursing home. about 130,000 children under 17 in ontario are unable to access basic dental care like check-ups and cleaning(it probably won't be these kids having their eggs frozen at 19 years old).

in the same newspaper, on the same day, you can read about the social stratification that allows some people to freeze their eggs for posterity and others to watch their teeth rot out of their head.

let's not even get into the other issues we have in canada, literacy rates, the reserve system where kids grow up without clean water, racism, homophobia, and skyrocketing tuition. those issues aren't going to affect the frozen egg child born in ten years!

and, some people have bigger problems to think about, like making sure they have "genetically-related" children some day when they're 45. yes, some day when you hang your $5,000.00 business suit up in your closet for the last time you'll have your own child(and probably your own nanny brought in by the foreign workers program to take care of it for you) you won't have to worry about the kids who can't afford to have their teeth cleaned or who don't have parents and live in foster homes.

you'll be able to look at that your growing belly, a feat achieved by large amounts of synthetic hormones and dollar bills and think "yes, i deserve this."

dear jerk infertile white people: stop whining, please.

i have a serious, serious problem with so called "fertility treatments" and people who are willing to do anything to have a biological child (like in this post--here)

i'm not going to sugar coat it, i think it's selfish. i think it's extremely out of date, and elitist.


so when i read this article in the star about the black market for human eggs i was just like, what the fuck people.

i'm so sick and tired of reading articles that make infertile couples such a sad, sad sob story. you're alive, you're healthy, you're usually wealthy enough to spend thousand upon thousand of dollars on crazy procedures, and you think you're the worst off person in the world because you can't grow a baby in your uterus and pop it out the tradition way?

give me a break.

the story is about a woman named "thea" who wants a baby(she's 39, so her options are limited apparently). because you can't legally buy eggs in canada she needs to go out and find someone willing to sell their eggs to her "illegally" which is apparently "draining" emotionally.

um, you want a baby so why don't you deal with the draining emotions?

so she posts on kijiji and within days she starts getting responses and this is what she said about them:

"few of the replies were worth considering: some women were too short, others the wrong ethnicity"

what the fuck? too short? the wrong ethnicity? you're SO sad because you can't have a baby but you won't buy a short woman's egg?

i'm sorry, but this proves my point about how selfish, elitist, and also racist this whole process is.

don't they even know anything about genes?? just because the mother is short doesn't mean her egg will produce a short baby.

and also, what's wrong with having a short baby??

it's eugenics, plain and simple, what is the difference between this and only buying the egg of a blonde haired/blue eyed woman that is guaranteed to be born a boy?

i'm sorry, toronto star, but i refuse to feel bad for couples like this--ever.

$68,000 babies are the worst!

the questions around ohip funding invitro fertilization continue to be lobbed at us today and to make us really feel the personal sting of this debate the star brought in a real life example:

"Danielle Alderman and her husband, Jeff, longed for a child.

Now, after $68,000 and several fertility treatments over five years, the dreams of the Burlington couple are coming true. Their baby, most likely a girl, is due at the end of the month.

The Aldermans think OHIP should foot the bill for other infertile couples who want children.

Of the $68,000, they spent about $25,000 on fertility procedures. The balance, for drugs associated with the procedures and to combat Danielle's existing blood-clotting disorder, was paid for by Jeff's work medical insurance plan.

"It's a shame that money can be the only thing that stands between amazing parents and their family," said Danielle, 32, a graphic artist."

wow.

honestly, i understand that this couple really wanted a baby. i get that a lot of people have a strong desire to have their own family.

but they feel that the government should pay $68,000 for that desire?

why do these people feel like these treatments, which THEY had covered, should be footed by the taxpayers?

what about using tax money to feed every child in this country? or expand and make more efficient the children's aid network so that abuse and neglect of children in this country can actually be addressed in a meaningful way(which isn't happening now)? why not make changes to the adoption system so that more homes for children can be found?

i find this real life story to be disgusting and totally offensive.

oh, its only "money" standing between parents and their family, danielle alderman?how about fucking nature? how many hormones and medications did you have to pump into your body before you could force it to be a baby carrier?

i get that you "want" a family, a biological baby. but guess what? some mothers "want" to have their eyes checked, or their dental health maintained, they want to feed their children and send them to a decent school.

if you have the resources to delve into fertility treatments that are expensive, go for it. but it's selfish and completely illogical to expect the procedures to be funded by the government when there are so many other uses for that money.

according to beverly hanck, the executive director of the infertility awareness association of canada, has stated that ontario cannot afford to fund infertility treatments.

hanck says that in ontario annually about 5,000 invitro fertilization treatments are done which is about 65% of all in vitro procedures performed in canada.

28% of women who undergo invitro and deliver in ontario have multiple births, which are higher risk and are associated with waaaay higher costs when it comes to care of the mother and infants.

alot of parents who opt for invitro have several embryos fertilized due to the high failure rate, so more embryos=more chances to conceive.

so the first and most obvious step would be to curb this practise, which could be achieved through regulating fertility clinics. apparently ontario could save at least $130 million annually by regulating single embryo fertilization---$130 MILLION.

so before we jump on the 'fund my invitro baby' bandwagon, maybe the government ought to regulate the industry it's being pushed to fund and recoup that $130 million dollars.

then maybe they could use those millions of dollars to, i don't know, actually provide basic health care.

the real "shame" here is that this diverts attention away from actual issues around infertility--like the environmental causes of infertility, that the expectation and pressure to have a family is so high and tense that people will do almost anything to achieve it, and that women's bodies are subjected to chemicals/hormones/invasive treatments all for the sake of motherhood--something that society makes them feel insufficient for if they don't participate in it.

maybe it should be funded eventually but right now i think it's more important for us to take a closer look at the actual issue and what's going on behind it, rather than just band-aiding this one up--because we all know how well band-aid solutions work.