Women around the US and the world are mentally persuaded to sell their bodies for a chance to help infertile couples. Jennifer Lahl, founder and President of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, exposes why women sell their eggs and what the unseen health risks of egg donation are in the new movie Eggsploitation.
Ms. Lahl showed the movie at the Family Research Center presenting a case defending women being manipulated into donating their eggs under the false pretenses presented to them. The college newspaper advertisements and pamphlets are simple yet enticing because of the promise of money in exchange for the woman helping an infertile couple. In other words they are marketed to make it seem like it is an equally beneficial process where everyone wins.
Clearly there is a catch. This is where “women need to heard,” Lahl said. In order to go through the egg donation process, women have to take medication, more specifically super-ovulation pills. This is where the danger lies, and the movie shows four separate examples from four unique women who all took the pills and had detrimental health defects shortly after taking them.
One lady had a ovary twist resulting in an emergency surgery and removal of that ovary in addition to her development of breast cancer during the procedure.
Still there is “no legal protection for these women,” said Lahl.
Money is being made off of these experiments in the pharmaceutical industry and the medical industry. Doctors benefit from fertility donors in more ways than just the prescription and eventually the egg extraction; they also have been treating the side effects after the actual process. Ms. Lahl has encountered many women who have had true tragedies when they were trying to help an infertile couple.
Miracles don’t come when they are expected and the Petri-dish pregnancy is an expected scientifically controlled creation disguised as a miracle.
The true miracle is the exploitation of young women, particularly college women, who are under a spell of debt that turns into moments of desperation. The movie Eggsploitation shows how the short term pay check for women’s eggs can be a temporary relief but the lasting effect is the health devastation that can follow.
Torey Hall is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.
