The War on Girls: Egg Harvesting and the Exploitation of Young Women Results in Death

Eggsploitation, or, as I call it, egg harvesting, is a deadly new form of prostitution, made possible by a combination of modern science, doctors who are willing to exploit, sell and endanger healthy patients in order to make money for themselves and a culture that regards women as a commodity to be bought and sold.

A recent death in India highlights the dangers:

SAN RAMON, Calif., July 13, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — News is just breaking in India aboutSushma Pandey, a 17-year-old young woman who died in 2010, two days after her third “egg donation.” Her death is being attributed to the procedures used to extract eggs from healthy, desirable young females like Ms. Pandey. These eggs are often resold to affluent westerners for use in commercial production of their children. Her post-mortem report states she had “one abrasion, four contusions and a blood clot in the head, plus six injection marks” as well as “congestion in the ovaries and uterus.” The possible cause of her death was listed as shock due to multiple injuries.

This most recent exposure of the daily exploitation of females offers yet another wake up call to the truth of the real, repeat, and often lethal harms of invasive egg removal procedures, which masquerade under the lie of donation. These transactions are anything but “donations” as young females — nearly children themselves — all over the world, desperately fall prey to offers of money like those made to Ms. Pandey. (Read more here.)

Here in the United States, egg harvesters run ads on Craigslist, college campus newspapers, Facebook and other social media, enticing healthy young women to undergo this dangerous procedure and allow egg harvesters (i.e., “infertility doctors”) to harvest their bodies for their eggs. The eggs are then sold for embryonic stem cell research and for “family building,” usually for gay couples.

The doctors who do this in Oklahoma misrepresent both the dangers and the suffering involved in submitting to egg harvesting. I assume they do this other places, as well. Based on conversations I’ve had with many of them, the young women in question often experience life-long health problems, including subsequent infertility, as a result of allowing doctors to harvest their bodies for eggs.

Jennifer Lahl, of the The Center for Bioethics and Culture is a remarkable woman who is fighting this evil. I have had the honor of working with her on legislation in the past. She is selfless in her dedication to end the exploitation of young women at the hands of unethical and predatory medical professionals. You can learn more about her work here.