How Much Should a Woman Be Paid for Her Eggs?

The terminology used to describe women who sell their eggs only makes things more complicated: The medical community doesn’t call

them patients; it calls them donors. And egg-donation websites regularly describe the process as the priceless gift of family to a couple in need.

But in nearly all cases, women aren’t gifting their eggs to anyone. They’re undergoing a medical procedure for which they will be compensated. It is, according to proponents of the existing system, a free-market exchange between a willing buyer and seller, not so different from buying and selling a house or a car. Donors, however, often express their personal motivations in a tangle of altruism and money—and the money has proven to be a point of contention among the women who sell their eggs and the people who determine how much they’re worth.

In a case expected to go to trial next year, a group of egg donors have filed a class-action lawsuit against the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, whose guidelines cap egg-donor payments at $10,000. This limit, the plaintiffs argue, constitutes illegal price-fixing, violating antitrust law and free-market principles. The suit’s central question is one of ethics as much as economics: Are donors being paid for their labor, their property, the risk they undertake, or a mixture of all three?In the ASRM guidelines, issued in 2007, the organization’s ethics committee considered—and then rejected—a pricing structure based on an outright comparison to sperm donation. If the average payment for sperm donation was $75 for an hour’s worth of work, the committee members reasoned, then a woman paid the same hourly rate should get $4,200 for the 56 hours it typically takes to donate eggs—but “because oocyte donation entails more discomfort, risk, and physical intrusion than sperm donation,” they wrote, “sperm-donor reimbursement rates are reasonably considered to underestimate the amount that is appropriate for women providing oocytes.”

The committee members also argued, however, that the space between too little money and too much is a narrow one. The ideal payment is up to $5,000, the ASRM believes; higher fees “require justification,” while more than $10,000 is always inappropriate. The possibility of more money, the guidelines say, could create an opportunity for donor exploitation in the egg market: Women may provide eggs “in response to financial need,” leading them “to conceal medical information relevant to their own health or that of their biological offspring.”

But according to Wendie Wilson-Miller, the president of an egg-donation agency in Pasadena, California, the price for eggs hasn’t budged in decades. In her experience, she said, donors offered $5,000 to $10,000 rarely protest or ask for more. There are certainly more young women who want to donate than intended parents, she explained, “so that has kept the fees for the majority of egg donors within the suggested cap.”