The Yale Daily News delves into the workings of the Yale Oocyte Donation and Surrogacy Program:
The women who donate their eggs are primarily motivated by a desire to help others to conceive a child, Dorothy Greenfeld, the Yale program’s social worker, said, though the sum is often what first piques their interest when they see an ad in a newspaper or the Yale Calendar.
“They think it’s better than giving blood but easier than giving a kidney,” Greenfeld said.
The Heartland Institute looks at the egg-selling trade, now a $3 billion business:
This new issue involves two major questions. First, what are the long-term effects on a woman who sells her eggs? Let’s face it–donating sperm is, as a matter of physiology, a transient thing. Harvesting eggs is not.
Second, should a woman be able to sell her eggs in the same way other people sell their organs, such as kidneys, as a part of her body with which she’s free to do as she chooses? Eggs are not kidneys–but neither are they sperm.
“We’re not going to know all the effects of women selling their eggs for at least 10 years or more,” noted Jane Orient, M.D., executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. “We don’t know the long-term consequences of the powerful drugs and surgery [necessary] to obtain the eggs. How many women are selling their chances of motherhood for a few thousand dollars?”