Laboring Donors
摘要
In this chapter, I discuss the different operations required for intending egg donors to make themselves bioavailable, asserting that each of them configures the unacknowledged labor of donorship. I examine donors’ process of choosing a clinic, arguing that while participants engaged in this process to assert agency and control, they eventually realized they might not be able to choose—grasping, in this way, their biocapital in the fertility industry. I explore the practical and emotional demands of egg donation, such as self-medication, work arrangements, and life commitments often precariously balanced with the donation process. I then focus on the pain and discomfort endured and how, contrary to the discourse of fertility clinics, women performed significant emotional and physical labor that required management before, during, and after extraction. I argue that these efforts constitute a specific kind of reproductive labor that extends beyond the donation itself and subjectivizes and tames women in particular ways.