Egg Donation: Questions & Answers
September 27, 2006
On a recent business trip, I ran across an ad announcing “immediate availability” of donated eggs that a “sophisticated” couple could purchase for in-vitro fertilization. Meanwhile, USA Today has uncovered that some young women are paying their way through college by selling their eggs to fertility clinics like the one featured in my in-flight magazine.
Commercialized egg donation raises a number of serious ethical issues. Read on for a Q&A about this important – and controversial – subject.
Below are the most common questions that I have heard asked about commercialized egg donation, with responses gleaned from my own bioethics research and personal experiences.
Q: Why is egg donation gaining popularity?
A: Many infertile couples are willing to pay sizeable sums of money to have a baby through the help of an anonymous egg donor. At the same time, biotechnology labs are also willing to pay for eggs to use in research. The demand for donor eggs is growing quickly in the biotech sector primarily to support embryonic stem-cell research, which destroys the human embryos created from these eggs.
The egg extraction procedure is complex and risky, so healthy women between the ages of 20 and 30 are mainly sought as donors. Couples and labs paying for eggs usually want the donors screened for age, health, and sometimes other factors like athleticism, intelligence, and musical talent. Women who meet these qualifications can make thousands of dollars for their eggs, so there is significant financial incentive to donate.
Q: What are the medical risks involved with donating eggs?
A: According to one organization opposed to the practice, Hands off Our Ovaries, up to 10% of female egg donors suffer Ovarian Hyper Stimulation Syndrome (OHSS) as a result of the procedure. OHSS can cause short- and long-term health problems, and in rare cases, sterility or death. More information on OHSS is available in this report [Adobe PDF] from the Genetics & Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University.
Q: Why is there more controversy over donated eggs than donated sperm? What are the ethical concerns?
A: Unlike sperm donation, egg donation requires both surgery and inducing hyper-ovulation, a risky medical procedure involving powerful drugs (see above). The donor endangers her own health in the process, even though the procedure will in no way benefit her (except financially). This violates a basic bioethical principle to “do no harm” unless the medical benefits for the patient outweigh the risks, which is not the case here: only healthy women with healthy eggs are selected as donors.
This problem is magnified by the fact that the multi-billion dollar fertility industry is widely unregulated today. Only a few states have laws supervising the egg donation process. And as of this week, California became the first state in the U.S. to have any restrictions on what women can be compensated for donating their eggs to stem-cell research. Until this happens nation-wide, exploitation of women who are poor or in debt (from college loans, etc.) is possible.
There are further ethical concerns about the growing trade in human tissues, which generally encourages the commodification of our bodies’ parts and, in this case, objectifies women as “egg suppliers.” We see evidence for this already in the donor screening process, which values some women over others for possessing certain, desirable traits.
Q: Why is commercialized egg donation ethically unacceptable but adoption is not, even though both have the same result (namely, giving an infertile couple a baby)?
A: The outcome may be the same, but there are three crucial differences to note here:
First, adoption is also ethically unacceptable when it is commercialized. To offer a financial incentive to the parent(s) giving up a child is equivalent to child-selling, or slavery. For this reason, most states’ laws only permit adopting parents to pay for the direct medical and legal expenses incurred in the adoption process.
Second, we are not so much concerned about the eggs donated but rather the treatment of the egg donor. As noted above, there is great potential for exploitation – viewing women as a means to a medical end rather than respecting their dignity and well-being – when this practice is unregulated.
Third, unlike adoption, egg donation does not solve or redeem an ethically troubling situation (for example, an abandoned child). Instead, it creates moral problems of its own for the sole purpose of meeting the market demands of certain fertility clinics and biotech companies. This is clearly incompatible with an ethics that places human life above corporate profits.
