An Egg-cellent way to make money?

As a Lacto-ovo vegetarian, I’ve often said that I eat eggs because I believe in a chicken’s right to choose. (I realize that they are more chicken periods than they are chicken abortions, and that the chicken really has no choice in the whole matter anyway, but still.)

Being adamantly pro-choice however doesn’t mean that there isn’t still a lot of grey area for me on the subject of eggs and unborn babies. A recent post on Jezebel about person stories of egg donation got me re-thinking about the subject. One woman who wrote in called it “another side of being pro choice,” the thinking being I guess that if you support a woman’s right to choose to not have a baby you must support a woman’s right to choose to pay to have another woman’s eggs make her baby and the right of the other woman to choose to sell her eggs.

As most people know, donating eggs is much more difficult than donating sperm (the limited amount of eggs a woman has, the possible medical complications, the invasiveness, the recovery time) and thusly much more lucrative. But just like sperm donation values good looks (you can even get your sperm donor to look like a famous person), intelligence, health, etc., egg donation can be highly competitive. Many of the stories of egg donation involve prospective parents who want to design some “perfect” baby from thin, tall, blonde, high-SAT, scoring athletic, musically-talented eggs. Which is part of the reason egg donation has always turned me off.

Sure, you may similarly pick a mate that is smart and attractive, but without knowing the person you don’t know what kind of personality this Arian standardized test-wiz will have. The factors that are valued (race often chief among them) aren’t necessarily what makes a good person, and besides, should you really be designing your kid?

As a single woman, the prospect of making $5,000-$10,000 for something you throw away every month anyways can sound tempting, but invasive medical procedures and moral quandaries over having children in the world that you don’t know aside, it turns out that most women probably wouldn’t even qualify anyways.

So it’s true, being pro-choice means you must support a woman’s right to choose whatever she wants to do with her body, no matter if it’s something you feel is responsible or would choose to do yourself, whether that be aborting a baby they don’t feel they can care for, or having 19 kids like the Duggers, or paying to have bio-chemist Barbie’s eggs planted in her. But, the obsession with having your own (even partially) biological “perfect” child when there’s thousands of kids waiting to be adopted just seems like a waste.

Boobs! In Public!

In the past couple weeks there’s been a big hullabaloo about ladies putting up picture of themselves breastfeeding on Facebook, and Facebook getting all “Those are boobs and that’s obscene!” and threatening to delete the accounts of those ladies. And then as you do the ladies have blogged about it and wanted everyone to change their Facebook status and pictures, at all (you know, the type of lazy nothingness that passes for activism these days)

For the most part I am totally on their side, and Facebook’s argument that they want “ the site to "[remain] a safe, secure and trusted environment for all users, including the many children.” holds no weight when those “children” are (according to Facebook’s rules) over 13 years old. Or when you take into account ridiculous FB applications like "Big Boobs" that lets users send each other cartoon drawings of breasts, or the “Boobs or Butt” application that makes users answer tough questions deciphering if a cropped image is cleavage or a butt, or "boobs" fan pages, or lots and lots of pretty sexualized cleavage shots in profile pictures.

Where these mommies lose me is when they start acting like having a kid is the pinnacle of human accomplishment. It’s a big deal sure, probably the biggest thing that will happen in your personal life, but it ladies have been doing it for awhile, don’t expect everyone to drop their bags and applaud when you whip your boob out to feed. Do I think women should be allowed to breastfeed in toys r us, or restaurants or anywhere else their babies are hungry? Yes of course. Do I think they should be able to post pictures of it wherever they want? Why not. What I disdain is the tone of their argument, like one mom who wrote an open letter to Facebook after they took down her boob pictures:
“That's right, Facebook. I grew two tiny people inside my womb, birthed them, almost died in the process, and then set my own needs aside to carry out the grave responsibility of sustaining those lives by creating nutritionally perfect food within my body and feeding it to them using my (GASP!) breasts.”
I can only respond with this fantastic Garfunkel and Oates song (yes I’m a little obsessed).



The overall issue I think is the odd values that Americans have on what is and isn’t offensive. I’ve never understood the lines of “decency” that we’ve agreed on as a society, like boobs are fine, but nipples aren’t, and butts are OK and long as there’s no crack. Sexual representations are sometimes OK, but sex isn’t. Objectification is funny and sells products, but representations of homosexually or things like breast feeding aren’t for young eyes and aren’t decent. You can call a woman a bitch on prime time TV, but you can’t call a man an asshole. I think I might start a Facebook group in protest of this.

Breastfeeding and Facebook the debate