Is There an Ethical Problem Here?

Hastings Center Report, Volume 40, Number 2, p. 3.

 By John A. Robertson 

Egg donation fills an important niche in American infertility practice. It helps women with ovarian failure, women over forty, and gay men to have children. It does so, to a large extent, because donors are paid for their services.

Some people, however, are uncomfortable with paying egg donors, and in most countries it is illegal. Some fear that payment exploits women, others that it risks “commodifying” gametes and resulting children. Although only Louisiana has seen fit to ban payments, the profession’s own ethics committee, created by the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, has issued payment guidelines, setting a $10,000 limit and specifying that compensation should not depend on the donor’s characteristics.

In this issue of the Hastings Center Report, Aaron Levine reports that, in a survey of two months of advertisements for egg donors in 306 college newspapers, he found that nearly half of the ads exceeded the ASRM’s $10,000 recommended limit on compensation.

Read the article.