A bright pink box fills my screen; soon it’s filled with blue cartoon sperm swimming towards a large, wobbling egg, where they congregate to spell the word ‘joy’. Alongside it is a message, which reads: ‘By becoming an egg or sperm donor, you could give the joy of starting a family to more than 200 people in Scotland, who need help becoming a family.’ It’s accompanied with the hashtag ‘JoyLoveHope’.
I’m looking at a digital advert, part of a series rolled out across radio and the internet in Scotland from 2021 until last year, where it culminated in National Fertility Week. Advertising for egg donors (and sperm donors) is a common – if ethically questionable – practice, and many private clinics do it. But this advert is different. It’s from the Scottish government.
To have a government involved in the soliciting and collection of women’s eggs is nothing if not dystopian.
This week, it emerged that Holyrood spent £186,000
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