Gendered Eugenics and the Problematic of Free Market Reproductive Technologies: Sperm and Egg Donation in the United States

Emerging reproductive technologies raise bioethical dilemmas for feminist theory and practice. While they have opened doors to alternative family formation, they have also perpetuated new forms of stratified reproduction. This article explores this dilemma through a study of the sperm banking and egg donation industries in the United States, arguing that free market reproductive choice has produced a form of gendered eugenics, which perpetuates beliefs in the genetic foundation of interwoven gender, race, and class hierarchies. In the United States, in vitro fertilization centers aggressively recruit donors with lures of cash and gifts, like iPods and movie tickets. Their marketing practices collapse genetic and nongenetic traits into a package that can be purchased by reproductive consumers. Online data banks hock sperm and eggs with information about donor race, ethnicity, skin tone, hair texture, grade point average, religion, and nationality. This article compares the social and physical traits of 1,515 sperm and egg donors to national averages for males and females to illustrate the ways in which donor selection and marketing practices perpetuate stratified norms of gender, race, and class. It argues that processes of human commodification and geneticism have combined with feminist resistance to state regulation of reproductive technologies to produce this more subtle form of eugenics. It contends that financial lures offered to donors act as a form of positive eugenics and should be prohibited. It calls for a new feminist repro-ethics based on principles of bodily integrity and reproductive empowerment that would shift from market-based to gift-based reproductive relations.