Although I’ve always wanted children, I didn’t meet my husband until I was 40. I had frozen my eggs, but when I tried to use them, it didn’t work out. After three years of trying and multiple I.V.F. attempts (fortunately covered by insurance), my doctors have said that, at 44, I won’t be able to get pregnant with my own eggs. My husband and I have decided to pursue egg donation, which, unlike adoption, is covered by our insurance.

I’d like the donation process to be as open as possible, ideally knowing our donor so our child could have a relationship with her. Most clinics, however, still use anonymous donation. Private donor-egg agencies that facilitate communication are beyond our budget. I did ask a distant cousin, but she understandably declined.

My husband and I are professors, and I have a former student with whom I’m fairly close. We think she’d make a great donor, but I worry it would be inappropriate to ask her. She was my student just two years ago. I know she doesn’t have much money,66jogo Jogos de Cassino Online no Brasil so the standard remuneration we’d offer might make it hard for her to decline, especially as a request from a former authority figure. Finally, she hopes to eventually enter my field, which could create a problematic power imbalance.

“As anyone with a family — or a chosen family — knows, you are never alone in service, Dr. Vasan said in a statement. “My wife and three young children have served alongside me, bearing the brunt of my absence and shouldering so much. I’m grateful for their love and have chosen that now it is time to support them and their well-being.”

On the other hand, my former student is highly responsible, and I trust her to make complex decisions. And while egg donation is considerably more invasive and riskier than sperm donation, I sometimes think that hand-wringing over a young woman’s choice to donate her eggs reflects sexist assumptions.

Is it inappropriate to discuss this with my former student and let her decide? Or does the power imbalance in our relationship create too much potential for exploitation? — Name Withheld

From the Ethicist:

The world is full of relationships that begin unequal but evolve over time: the medical resident who becomes her attending physician’s respected colleague; the junior lawyer who becomes a valued partner; and, inevitably, the executive who, having ascended to senior management, must place a former mentor on a “performance improvement plan.” What’s more, we wouldn’t be able to make significant agreements with anyone if we insisted on there being no imbalances of power at all between the parties. Nor is it automatically exploitative to receive something from a person who has reason to be grateful to you.

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