Surrogacy has become big business and women in poor
countries are being exploited in the process as is evident in recent reports
from India surrounding the issue of egg donation, which has also been termed
eggsploitation.
Women’s e-news reports that two women have died from causes
tied to their role as egg donors in India's booming market for artificial
reproduction.
Fertility centers in India (and elsewhere) are clever in
their approach and openly invite women in the age group of 25-30 to join them
in ‘helping childless couples’. The process is also promoted as an easy way of
generating income for women. Neither the morality, nor the possible consequences
involved are highlighted to prospective egg donors.
You’ve probably seen them—most of us have. Ads soliciting
women to donate their eggs for in vitro fertilization are everywhere: in
newspapers, on the Internet, on college campus bulletin boards.
The procedure
is far more problematic than those upbeat ads would ever lead one to believe.
The women involved are given hormones to force their bodies to produce far more
eggs than they normally would—and that, as you might expect, leads to
consequences.
The consequences include strokes, brain damage, internal
bleeding, or infertility after the procedure. Some women ended up with cancer,
even those who had no family history of the disease. Others nearly died from
complications of the surgery done to retrieve the eggs and sadly some also die
from hyper-stimulation of the ovaries.
But the problems go beyond that. The women involved in egg
donation are being exploited they are being turned into human commodities. They
are providing genetic material for their own biological children, whom they may
never have a chance to know. If they express any concerns or reservations, they
are pressured and even guilt-tripped into continuing.
Young women are often unaware of the risks of egg donation,
donors have to take drugs to stimulate egg production, and complications as we
have set out may cause future infertility or even death in rare cases.
Women are usually told that egg donation is a safe
procedure, when the reality is decidedly unsafe. No young woman should be used
in a procedure that jeopardizes her own fertility -- indeed her own life -- in
order to line the pockets of those who promote the infertility industry's human
egg trade.
The disastrous implications of the practice are set out in a
video and can be found on the "Eggsploitation" website
