Josie wants to freeze her eggs, but the cost is high ($4,000 to $8,000) and not covered by her student insurance. A local clinic is offering a new program–free egg freezing–for patients willing to donate half of their oocytes to a donor bank and keep the remaining half for their use. In other words, barter your eggs to be able to afford to freeze some of your own.
Josie is getting a service valued at around $8,000, and the egg bank will make around $11,000 per donated egg. Assuming Josie produces 20 eggs, she will have 10 saved for herself and will donate 10. This means the egg bank will make around $100,000 on this exchange (minus the cost of the retrieval and freezing process). There is no guarantee that any of the frozen eggs will produce a baby, however the egg bank profits no matter the outcome.
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When the costs of donor eggs are high, only the wealthy are likely to be able to use egg donation services. So, donations are heading mainly to the rich. If egg donors can select who prospective users will be, as many new egg donor programs are promising as a means of recruiting donors–say, Christians only, no mixed-race or same-sex couples, Indian Americans only, or only those of a particular political orientation–what happens to respect for diversity and social equity?
