Today in her column in The Times the journalist Janice Turner has set out in explicit detail why the targeting of women – aged as young as 18 – by fertility clinics and the Scottish Government for their eggs is so wrong, and represents such a power imbalance as well as a risk to women’s health.
Ms Turner covers the Westminster Hall debate on egg donation which took place last month, the concerns of MPs, and the worrying fact that no research is being done in to the long term impacts on women’s health of egg retrieval.
We believe it is financially exploitative for women to be offered a flat fee of £985 per egg donation round and have consistently raised this with the Government. We want the minimum age of egg donors to rise to 25 and adverts asking women for their eggs to be banned, or at a bare minimum to state health risks.
Women’s eggs have become a tradeable commodity, and a concerning attitude of entitlement is developing towards women’s eggs and bodies. We also welcome Ms Turner condemning the language of the surrogacy industry, which reduces mothers to “gestational carriers” and “surrogates”.
The Department for Health and Social Care has consistently presided over public scandals: infected blood, maternity failings, sodium valproate, vaginal mesh, puberty blockers for children and cross sex hormones for under 18s. We believe egg donation will prove to be the next big public health scandal – and we urge Government to act to protect women, before it is too late.
Please do consider emailing your MP about egg donation. You can find an email for sending to your MP about the issue here or to the right hand side of your screen, and an article by our Founder in The Critic magazine about egg harvesting can be read here.
