I’d get in at 8:50 and carefully hang my coat while the phone rang. My voicemail would be full of messages, left in that window of infomercials and irrational thought patterns. “ Yeah, uhm. I was wonderin’ about this egg donation that I read in the paper. It says I can make $7,000.”

The overwhelming majority of callers were black girls in their twenties from a lower income and limited education. They sat, nervous in the waiting room, thumbing through photos of their kids with acrylic nails the color of tropical fish.

I’d put on my phone-voice and ask: How old are you? What is your racial background? How much do you weigh? How tall are you? What is your education level? Have you ever been depressed? Diagnosed with anxiety? An eating disorder? Are you in contact with both of your birth parents?

At least 80% of girls didn’t pass the first round of requirements.

It was a time when the economy was digging itself into a hole. So far, the parents were still paying—a donation cycle at $20,000, which doesn’t include clinic fees or guarantee a pregnancy. The parents were often infertile by age. They were desperate, going a little crazy. I began to wonder if there were any really good parents.

“You just want white bitches” one of my callers said when her application was denied, and hung up. Well. The intended parents were buying genes, they wanted: white, movie star beautiful and diplomas from the right University.

At parties, I would find myself cornered by a flock of young women. They’d seen the ads too. The media even picked it up as a trend: “College students turn to donating eggs in economic crisis!” I was on television twice, answering the phone while smiling: “I’m sorry but you don’t meet our requirements at this time.”

I’d give the girls my spiel: “If you pass the requirements you are put in the system and when an intended parent chooses you, we’ll call and ask if you can go through a cycle. You will get several shots of hormones. Then go through the egg donation process which is done vaginally. You will be put out for the procedure and need the entire day to rest.”

They stood listening eyes a-glitter, breasts pushed out in unconscious knowledge that their female bodies had the ability to give life, that this was sought after.

What was not included in my speech (and what one study would find most egg donors don’t know) was that these shots were drugs that encourage the ovary to ripen several eggs simultaneously, rather than the one egg normally ovulated each month.

Some argue we don’t know enough about this heavy dose of hormones  to call it safe. There have been no long term studies on egg donors. Others say a lot about can be learned from the studies on infertility patients, who go through the same stimulation and egg retrieval process. With these patients, cancer is a health concern, which may be from the infertility itself.

Sometimes, I felt awkward when a friend asked about becoming a donor, I bit my lip. Lesbians never made it through. Bisexuals sometimes did, but we had to tell the parent about the donor’s sexuality. I guess it was the whole gay gene thing. Which science has not concluded. But it was also thought that the parents just wouldn’t choose gay donors.

At work, the question inevitably directed at me was “So when are you going to donate?”It was tempting: it wasn’t just a single 7 grand, you could do it up to 6 times. But something about it felt off.  Most parents, I’d decided, were not really good parents. I began avoiding my own parents phone-calls.

One afternoon I was alone in the office when a woman called. She was hysterical.”I just don’t understand how you could do this.  There are so many babies that need adopting. Why are people doing this?” I was bored. I calmed her down and let her talk. I didn’t tell her that adoption can often be cheaper than using an egg donor.

I do empathize with egg donor parents. I don’t think there is anything morally wrong with choosing egg donation over adoption.  But it does seem that children are often, in part, brought into the world for selfish reasons.

A study in Fertility and Sterility reported that about one in five donors experienced psychological effects. Some women reported positive ripples, feeling proud for helping an infertile couple. Others began to ruminate, worried about the strangers raising their eggs– their genetic kids.

As I worked to help people get babies, my mind spinning with my own childhood, I grew sensitive. I no longer grit my teeth when a kid cried on the bus. I saw the Mom yelling. I saw the stay-at-home Moms on parade,  ignoring their reaching babies, not hearing the kid say they needed something.

Donor-babies come into life with a delicate background. Potentially, they could live an entire life shadowed by family secret. The donor is not listed on the birth certificate. They may never know half siblings, existing in mirrored ignorance.

If I were to donate my eggs, I couldn’t choose which parents I wanted to help have a baby. It would’ve been about the 7 grand. It would have been just another grasping reason to bring a life into the world.