By Helen Gibson, Surrogacy Concern
Last week, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) raised the cap on payments that could be made by fertility clinics to young women for their eggs, to the dismay of women’s rights campaigners. On 1 October the change was made, with payments to women for their eggs rising from £750 to £985 per cycle, while payments to men for their sperm have risen from £35 to £45 per donation.
We are extremely concerned that such payments may incentivise vulnerable young women on low incomes, or those who are students, to sell their eggs for money.
Once harvested and frozen, packages of six or ten eggs can be bought from fertility clinics, with prices starting from as little as £5750; raising huge concerns that private clinics are making money off the back of women’s body parts. The HFEA says payments to women are “compensation”; to reimburse women for their time, and expenses, and that donations remain “altruistic”; but the view of many women’s rights campaigners is that payments should be banned completely, to remove the risk that eggs are being sold from a point of financial need.
In 2002 the HFEA recorded just 10 new egg donors, in 2022 there were 1650 in the UK. Adverts targeting women for their eggs are everywhere. Women as young as 18 have become egg donors, and other donors report being contacted on Instagram by couples who want their eggs.
Because of the age group targeted for egg donation, many older people simply have no idea this is happening; but it is they who are benefitting. Because egg “donation” reveals a huge power imbalance: younger, poorer women, having their bodies mined for the benefit of older, wealthier couples. The language of the public debate is skewed towards those who want eggs: little focus is made towards the young female “donors”, or the donor conceived child.
Egg harvesting is not simple, painless, uncomplicated or in any way equivalent to sperm donation. It involves huge health risks and dangers; I have been inundated in recent months with testimonies from women who nearly died after egg retrieval.
Egg harvesting attempts to yield a high number of eggs at once, as more eggs mean a higher choice of ‘quality’ embryos (and onwards sales for the clinic). A woman in the UK may undertake ten cycles of donation; a dangerous ask bordering on medical malpractice. The process sees a young woman put through the early stages of IVF; she must inject hormones to stop her ovaries working temporarily, before taking follicle stimulating hormones (FSH) to overstimulate the ovaries into producing an artificially high number of eggs. She later injects human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) which helps eggs to mature for retrieval.
On the day of collection, the woman is sedated; eggs are collected using a needle that's passed through the vaginal wall and punctures each ovary repeatedly, gathering fluid from each follicle (the fluid contains the eggs).
And this is where ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS) can cause problems. If fluid leaks out of the swollen ovaries during collection, it can spread around the body; blood clots can develop, which can be fatal. There’s no way to stop this once it starts. Two women in the UK died as a result in 2005/6. Complications experienced by women who contacted me include suffering from bowel perforations, sepsis, cysts and passing out from the pain of the procedure, with some even being held down by nurses to hold the ovaries in the right position during collection.
We believe this to be a form of gynaecological violence against women. It is unacceptable to ask women to do this for the benefit of strangers. Younger women are at greater risk of OHSS; the very group targeted by egg donor adverts. 53 women developed severe or critical cases of OHSS last year, and an estimated 30% of women undergoing egg harvesting develop symptoms.
The Department for Health and Social Care has told me they have not seen or undertaken any studies into the long-term harms of egg harvesting. And the Scottish Government, which targets women and men as young as 18 in publicly funded adverts for their eggs and sperm, haven’t done so either.
Adverts asking women to donate their eggs don’t have to list health risks. Payment for gametes, and adverts seeking donors, should be banned completely. If adverts are to be allowed to continue, health risks must be listed upfront. The minimum age for donation, 18, is too low.
Those of us who take an interest in women’s and children’s rights owe it to young women to ask questions, hold Government to account, and ask bodies such as the HFEA just whose interests they are pursuing.
More information on issues around surrogacy can be found on the Surrogacy Concern website.
