Love for your neighbor or money?
Is an altruistic form of surrogacy and egg donation possible at all?
In the new German documentary by Julia Kaulbars
https://www.zdf.de/dokumentation/zdfzoom/zdfzoom-das-geschaeft-mit-dem-kinderwunsch-100.html
(ZDFzoom: Business on the desire to have a baby)
The journalist raises the question: is there an altruistic form of help in which egg donors and surrogate mothers do that purely out of love for their neighbor, receiving only a small compensation?
She goes to different countries to find the answer, to countries where it is claimed that this particular form of help is possible.
Greece: are surrogate mothers altruistic?
She travels to Greece where surrogacy has been officially allowed for foreign couples since 2013. There she meets a surrogate mother, who is interested in a monetary reward, although she claims that it is important for her to just help because her help will return to her many times over. But in reality, the surrogate mother is a single mother of three children and lives on a cash benefit of 280 euros per month. If she helps a foreign couple, she will receive 10,000 euros or 30,000 euros and she says that this is a very good start to a new life.
After that, the journalist contacts a Greek lawyer who does not trust such amounts and considers it a mistake because 20,000-30,000 euros is a too big sum. She says an altruistic option is 10,000 euros.
Spain: donors act out of purely “humane motives”
The journalist meets with a Spanish donor who donated her eggs 6 times. She says that this money was important to her to pay for the apartment. She received 900 euros each time.
The donor talks about her communication with a psychologist (this is how it works there: a conversation with a psychologist to determine the donor’s reasons is needed), who asked her about her motivation, and every time she was answering she had to play the role.
At the end of the video, Sara Lafuente-Funes criticizes Spanish altruism and says that these are the circumstances in which donors are the only losers. This is a very hypocritical situation in which altruism is preached and the money is paid, but this money is negligible.
