Dear Friend of the CBC:

Yesterday we reported on an article in the Los Angeles Times calling for “family equality” in light of the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize gay marriage in all fifty states. Among the many egregious omissions in the article are the harms to women who agree to serve as egg donors for gay couples.

The author rightly observes:

While lesbian couples have long used donor insemination to have children, gay male couples have increasingly turned to surrogacy, and most commonly gestational surrogacy, in which the surrogate carries a child genetically related to another woman—an egg donor—and one of the men.

But what are the costs involved in egg donation under the guise of promoting “family equality”?

  • Short-term there are real, serious and potentially life-threatening harms for the young women’s health.
  • There is little to no peer-reviewed medical research on the long-term safety effects of egg procurement on the health of the young women who provide their eggs, making informed consent impossible!
  • Egg providers are enticed through ads in online classifieds, social media, and college newspapers offering anywhere from $5,000 to $100,000 per extraction. These ads are markedly coercive and manipulative of young college-aged women as they directly appeal to their financial need without any mention of the potential health risks involved.

These are dirty little secrets that the infertility business doesn’t want you to know—and neither do those championing this non-existent right to “family equality.”

For over a decade, the Center for Bioethics and Culture has been the leading organization pulling back the curtain and exposing the risks of these practices.

That’s one of the reasons why our film Eggsploitation won the 2011 Prize for Best Documentary in the California Independent Film Festival. It’s why we’re in the final stages of production on a new documentary short on the continued eggsploitation of women. And it’s why we work across the aisle to build a diverse coalition of individuals and groups to oppose the practice of buy and selling eggs and trading on the female body.

Here’s what the medical experts have to say about the practice of buying and selling eggs:

FromTheExperts-videoStill

Listen to what former egg donors have to say about the practice:

EggDonorHealth-video-still

Do we really want to build a society that promotes such practices under the false banner of “family equality”? Those of us at the CBC refuse to participate in such a practice. We’d like for you to join us.

For a one-time gift of $50, we’ll send a copy of Eggsploitation to a friend or to an organization of your choosing. For a gift of $500, we’ll send Eggsploitation to your entire state legislature. And for $1,000, we’ll send our entire trilogy on third-party reproduction—Eggsploitation, Breeders?, AND Anonymous Father’s Day—to each and every member of your sate legislature.

 Can we count on your support?

Sincerely,
Jennifer Lahl

Can I count on your support?

The Center for Bioethics and Culture is a non-profit 501(c)(3) public benefit educational organization. All gifts are tax-deductible.

Author Profile

Jennifer Lahl, CBC Founder
Jennifer Lahl, CBC Founder
Jennifer Lahl, MA, BSN, RN, is founder and president of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. Lahl couples her 25 years of experience as a pediatric critical care nurse, a hospital administrator, and a senior-level nursing manager with a deep passion to speak for those who have no voice. Lahl’s writings have appeared in various publications including Cambridge University Press, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News, and the American Journal of Bioethics. As a field expert, she is routinely interviewed on radio and television including ABC, CBS, PBS, and NPR. She is also called upon to speak alongside lawmakers and members of the scientific community, even being invited to speak to members of the European Parliament in Brussels to address issues of egg trafficking; she has three times addressed the United Nations during the Commission on the Status of Women on egg and womb trafficking.