Is Payment for Egg Donation an Undue Inducement?

Abstract

Should egg donors be paid? A negative answer might be offered on the ground that payment for egg donation is coercive. But is this viewpoint tenable? Is the offer of payment for egg donation really coercive? Even if not coercive, might payment for egg donation nonetheless be seen as exploitative? And if so why? The central argument of this paper focuses on the question whether the offer of payment for egg donation is an exploitative inducement and therefore an undue inducement. Another question raised in this paper is whether, given that it is commodifying, payment for egg donation constitutes a failure to recognize the giftedness and true value of human life.

KEYWORDS:

• egg donation
• exploitation
• coercion
• inducement
• manipulation
• bribery
• degradation

Notes on contributor

In 2001 Agneta completed her doctoral thesis at King's College London, which was entitled ‘Marriage, Contraception, Celibacy and the Family in the Early and Late Writings of John Paul II: A Critical Study’. This included a comparison between the sexual ethics and methodology of John Paul II and Karl Barth. She has lectured at King's College London, University of Chichester and Heythrop College, and is also currently Associate Lecturer at the Maryvale Institute, Birmingham.

Notes

1 In a 2016 legal settlement the American Society for Reproductive Medicine agreed to remove from their earlier guidelines the need for justification for egg donor fees over $5000, in effect allowing agencies and private egg donors to charge what they want. Comment by the International Fertility Law Group is available at: https://www.iflg.net/settlement-ends-price-guidelines-for-egg-donor-fees/.

2 The egg donor is exposed to hormone treatment aimed at stimulating her egg production, and so making her ovaries produce a number of eggs in the same cycle. This hormone treatment can have adverse side-effects such as ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS) which in aworst case scenario can be lethal.

3 At the same time I take issue with her defence of payment for organ donation on the grounds that such payment constitutes an inducement rather than a form of coercion.

4 See, Keen et al. (2015). They show that ‘of the 46 agency websites examined, 71.7% suggest the benefit of emotional fulfilments’. The latter ranged from ‘proud to help a family’, to ‘feel tremendous gratification’, ‘life-enriching and incredibly beautiful experience for young women’.