As the time left before spring break slowly dwindles down to the final hour, classes are seemingly more and more torturous. As much as I do my best to sit and listen to what my professors are aiming to teach, my mind wanders. My eyes leave my doodle-filled notebook page and drift up the wall to the bulletin board of advertisements. Concert advertisement, roommate wanted, publish your work … when is spring break, again? Wait a second – what is this? “Be an egg donor.” What?

Well, that’s interesting. I have eggs. Someone is willing to pay between $5,000 and $10,000 for those puppies? This sounds like a moral dilemma between genetic parenthood and a new car to me. I could have a son or daughter living inside another woman for nine months. At the same time, I could pay off some debt, take a trip, or even help pay for a semester at sea. Some of the earned money could even go into savings bonds for my newly born offspring.

But, doesn’t something about that whole idea strike you as off? It’s understandable that families who are unable to have children need egg donors in order to have a chance at getting pregnant. If their baby is unable to have his/her mother’s genetic traits, he/she still could have a chance at inheriting the father’s. But would that pose an issue for the mother? She would technically be raising a child that is genetically some other woman’s child with their husband, lover, or partner. Would she, as the mother, still feel the connection with her baby that she would if she was the genetic mother? Is love just love or is there a connection between people that only genetics has to offer?

Moreover, wouldn’t the egg donor bestow a moral issue? Not having to raise the baby, would the genetic mother still feel as if she were the baby’s mother? If the baby has your eyes, your smile, and your same double jointed thumbs, does that make you the mother? Do you have to raise the baby from Day One to be the mother or are you the mother before the baby even opens his/her eyes?

At the same time, if a family decides against adoption and still desires to have a child, shouldn’t they be able to? Sometimes the act of giving birth is enough for a mother to feel the instinctive mother-nature instinct. Sometimes just the act of having a child to look after is enough. Sometimes just being called “mom” is enough. Just loving the baby is enough.

In the case that love is just enough to feel like a mother and to start a family, the question of adoption arises again. If there are babies in the world without love and in search of love, wouldn’t that be all the reason to adopt? If the eggs of the mother in question malfunction and are not able to create genetically matching children, her desire to have a child aims at the same goal as egg adoption. The only difference is that the baby would have the father’s traits and still be carried in the womb. The end result of having a baby with another woman’s genes is all the same. So, how important is appearance?

It’s hard to tell which party has the bigger moral dilemma. Between the egg donor and the family receiving the egg, the issue surrounding motherhood is in question. Which mother serves as the true mother? It seems to circle the age-old argument of nature and nurture.

If nature proves to overpower nurture, egg donation could pose issues for the baby, which is the main concern. If the baby grows up looking everything like the father and nothing like the mother, they could possibly draw questions on their heritage. What seems like a good idea now to make money could very well end up in an unexpected knock at the door years down the line from a son or daughter you had without really having. Even if the adoptive parents allowed you to see the child throughout its life, the family structure could be problematic. The child could feel more connected to their genetic mother, the child could feel abandonment. The child could feel paid for.

That seems like a lot for a college student to take on. If it’s not even to balance a life of classes, papers, grades, work, and life in general, adding a moral dilemma on top of that is a plateful. Get money, but be a mother of sorts? Yikes. Can you really put a price on that? To put a price tag on your eggs is putting a price on life, on your heritage, and on your moral fiber. It’s all pretty heavy for a classroom bulletin board. It’s all pretty heavy for anywhere.

Leigh Greaney is a Collegian columnist. She can be reached at [email protected].