Synecdoche: Writing a Transnational Egg Donation Story

Abstract

I began with the suggestion that egg procurement practices make nationalism palpable. But this can also be said in reverse, that nationalism makes egg procurement practices knowable. Romanian egg sellers may be exploited subjects, and the practices of oocyte extraction at the private clinic in Romania did not always manifest the ‘care’ dimension of ‘cross-border reproductive care’. The practices at this clinic indicate a ‘reverse traffic’, a way in which the liberal democratic policies of the European Union for protecting people against trafficking can be bypassed by reversing the direction of travel and changing who travels. In this case the eggs go to the recipients and the doctors travel instead of patients. The Romanian women whom I interviewed saw themselves as benefiting and even profiting from their situation, they transgressed Romanian paternalism and tried to ‘get a better life’ at the same time as they were exploited for their valued body part. The doctors see the Romanian women as an available resource, which can help them make good reproductive citizens of ‘un-reproductive’ Israelis. In this manner the private clinic becomes more of a supportive family to egg recipients than the state. This is done through the cultivation of Jewish notions of messianic hope, coupled with capitalist ideals of market exchange and profit.