I’d like to tell you a story about a girl named Sushma Pandey. She worked at a scrap depot in India earning 4,500 rupees a month, about $80. To earn extra money, she sold her eggs for in vitro fertilization, earning more than five times her monthly wages for each donation. After her third visit, she was hospitalized for abdominal pain. The next day, Sushma died with “congestion in the ovaries and uterus.”[1] Sushma’s tragic story is not unique, nor is it limited to India. Thousands of young women worldwide are being induced to undergo a procedure that is not safe and may have serious long-term complications.
The procedure is called “egg donation,” which disguises the reality that most women are “vendors.” They sell their eggs because they are desperate, like Sushma, or need to pay off credit card debt, like many college students.
Fertility clinics use slick ads to recruit young women to be egg donors “to help infertile couples have families.” In the U.S. egg donors are typically paid anywhere from $5,000-10,000. “Elite” donors with Ivy League backgrounds have been offered as much as $100,000 for their eggs (but we can’t document that any woman was actually paid that much). With this much money at stake, how could women’s eggs not be seen as a valuable commodity?
Regardless of their views about in vitro fertilization with other people’s gametes, both conservatives and progressives are concerned about the exploitation of women. It is a genuine health issue.
The process is much more involved than sperm donation. In the U.S., the woman must undergo a pelvic exam, blood draw, ultrasounds, and psychological evaluation; take birth control pills; and endure one to three weeks of daily abdominal injections of hormones to stop egg production. Then, she must take daily injections of another hormone to stimulate extra egg production, and have daily blood tests. Finally, she takes a third hormone to trigger the release of the mature eggs. She may produce as many as 20 eggs, which are harvested using a suctioning needle.[2]
Side effects include menopause-like symptoms, the possibility of accidental pregnancy, and ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, which affects about 1 in 10 women. Up to 2% of women develop severe OHSS, requiring hospitalization, with problems such as fluid accumulation in the abdomen, kidney damage, and torsion of the ovaries. Although rare, some women have died.[3] Some studies suggest these women are vulnerable to a higher rate of ovarian cancer.
So, how many women become egg vendors with fully informed consent about the risks to her? We really don’t know. What we do know is that for many, like Sushma, the desperation of poverty leads them to risk even their life, for the benefit of another woman who is wealthy enough to pay.
Is this the kind of world we want to live in? Think about it.
[1] Mayur Janwalkar, “17-yr-old Egg Donor Dead, HC Questions Fertility Centre’s Role,” Indian Express July 12, 2012, http://www.indianexpress.com/news/17yrold-egg-donor-dead-hc-questions-fertility-centres-role/973327/0 (accessed July 30, 2012).
[2] “The Medical Procedure of Egg Donation,” Egg Donation Information Project, http://www.stanford.edu/class/siw198q/websites/eggdonor/procedures.html (accessed September 12, 2012).
[3] Ibid.