There’s currently a great big medico/legal fuss under way, about some South African women who have been selling off their ova to infertile foreigners. The South African Society of Reproductive Science has called the trade both “exploitative” and “potentially dangerous”.
An excellent article by Jo-Anne Smetherham, published in the Cape Times, revealed that at the centre of the dispute is a California-based agency calling itself Renew Body & Soul. Among other venues, the agency has been touting at local universities, offering in the region of $1 500 an ovum. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line various middlemen have apparently been raking off their commissions and the donors have been getting far less. There’s a report that one woman received only R1 000 for a perfectly viable jumbo-sized ovum.
It might even be criminal, as taking actual money for human eggs contravenes a stipulation of Health Department legislation, which specifies that payments for human tissue may only be made “in kind”. This legislation supersedes the old Anatomical Donations and Post Mortem Examinations Act that (under the 1970s National Party which enacted it) specifically forbade the exchange of “gonadal” tissue, unless such exchange had the permission of the minister (in writing). It didn’t take much imagination to interpret this clause as an extension of Section 16 of the old Immorality Act: making sure no clandestine miscegenation took place in liberal laboratories. Strangely, this provision has been carried forward into the National Health Bill of 2001, where the transplantation of gonads “which could lead to reproduction” is also forbidden unless with ministerial sanction.
A lot must depend on what is meant by the term gonad. Loosely defined it’s “an organ that produces sex cells”. May we assume this covers both genders, that both ovaries and testicles qualify? Whatever the answer to that, it may surprise the minister that, from a male perspective, donating one’s sex cells doesn’t traditionally require political permission. “Excuse me phoning this late, minister, but the foreplay took longer than expected. Oh, she wanted all the usual assurances: promises of marriage, that I love her and that I won’t lose respect. Excuse me panting like this but we’re getting to the short strokes and in terms of Section 73 (2) of the Act, I’d like your permission in writing before I let rip with my organ’s donation. My fax number is…”
And what exactly does the term “paying in kind” mean? Does this mean tissue bartering has to take place? “I’ll give you a 32-year-old kidney with a five-year walk-in guarantee if you give me a low-mileage left foot.” If it comes (pun totally intended) down to having to swap reproductive material then some sort of formal exchange rate needs to be established. Normally, women are quite parsi- monious, laying only one ovum a month, even when kept in batteries. It is believed that, given the right sort of stimulation, certain free-range martini-fed bimbos can produce two. On the other hand, men discharge their fertilisation cells in the countless millions — and more than once a month if one includes the showers and the dreams.
The idea of product selection is long overdue in the surrogate egg and sperm business. As it is, the anonymity of the donors is guaranteed. If a woman is in search of non-coital fertilisation, she has to take what’s offered by the sperm bank. There’s no way she can ask about much more than his eye colour or his height. It’s still a “lucky packet” option. Had she chosen to be impregnated in the traditional way, she’d have had a greater say in her choice of a father for her child.
This is old-fashioned and impractical. It has its roots in the sentimental notion that reproduction of the species is humankind’s expression of some divine prerogative. It has taken countries like China to make practical steps to control soaring birth rates. The Chinese version of ministerial permission is the “one-child” policy: a long overdue move away from the medieval doctrines of institutions such as the Catholic Church.
The world has become grossly over-populated by uninhibited human reproduction. If we could keep our breeding down by about 70%, the planet might stand a chance. The Astronomer Royal recently predicted only a 50/50 likelihood of the planet surviving another century of human plunder. The rapacity of political and commercial wealth, combined with the slow but steady devastation of the natural environment by those struggling to survive, has resulted in what we have today: a world where ancient South American forests are being reduced at the rate of a football field every 30 minutes, where precious coastal dunes are strip-mined, where over-fishing has all but depleted whole species, where slash-and-burn practices are the last resort of those condemned to peasantry.
Our politicians run very scared of offending anyone by introducing birth-control legislation. What we need to do is find a way where money can be made by restricting birth rates. Business people will do the rest.