Posted on 11/02/2006 6:39:23 AM PST by NYer
A young woman has put her eggs for sale on the internet to pay off £15,000 of credit card debts.
Alexandra Saunders posted her details on an American website after reading about the huge amount that can be made in a woman's magazine.
The 26-year-old, who already has three jobs to try and pay off her debts, thought it would be an easy way to make money.
It is illegal for a woman to sell her eggs within the UK but egg donation is big business in the US where childless couples pay up to £20,000 in exchange the eggs of a young healthy woman.
Critics warned that many young women were unaware of the potential serious health risks of donating eggs.
They say that many donors are single, childless women in their 20s who are in debt and only interested in financial reward.
Miss Saunders, of High Wycombe, Bucks, admitted that she was lured by the prospect of money.
She said: 'I was sat in a doctor's waiting room and I read about it in a magazine.
'It just said, 'Sell your eggs for thirty grand' or something like that. There was the name of a website at the end of the piece which I can't remember the name of and I just put my name down.
'There was a long list of women who had also put their names down.
'You put down a few details about yourself such as whether you're healthy or smoke and that's it. I haven't heard anything yet but couples can get in touch with me directly.'
Miss Saunders works as a software co-ordinator during the day and works five nights a week in two different pubs, earning a total of about £20,000 a year.
'I'm quite a bit in debt and I just want to get it paid off really. I ran up the debts by just being an idiot.
'I really could do with the money. I told my mum about it and she said, 'Well, if it get's you a bit of money, it's a good idea.'
'The magazine story was saying about girls coming from Britain and going to America and selling their eggs. It just sounds like a good idea - easy money really - and it helps someone out.
'I'm using them so, if someone else can, it would be good and clear me out of a hole too.'
A change in the law last year means that, at the age of 18, a child born from donated eggs can be told who their biological mother is.
The lack of anonymity is putting off many potential donors.
In the UK, egg donors can only receive 'compensation' for expenses incurred which has also contributed to a shortage of voluntary donors.
Josephine Quintavalle, of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said: 'The sort of money on offer in the US to egg donors is extremely tempting to some but I think at the very least women should be well informed about the risks.
'Egg donation is not like sperm donation. Women's eggs have to be harvested and the procedure can cause infertility, illness and even death.
'That is why people in the US pay such high prices for eggs because of the dangers involved.
'A young woman may think that getting £20,000 for her eggs is worth the risk. But then she might want children at 30 and find out she can't have them.
'Ironically, she then may have to pay the same amount for someone else's eggs.'
First off selling eggs is WRONG under ANY circumstance.
Secondly, who'd want eggs from someone this IMMORAL, STUPID and IRRESPONSIBLE?
She's hoping her eggs will bring home the bacon;)
ping
Well, I guess we can see where she got her ideals from.
Working for a living wouldn't help?
When I was younger (and stupid) I seriously considered this. I got the packets and was really going to do it for money - I had just moved to AZ and was kind of poor. Luckily, I met my husband shortly after I moved here, and he was so strongly opposed to it, but I didn't understand why. Now I understand why he thought it was wrong and I share the same view. I think there are too many risks to the 'donor' to go through this, but it's not something the 'harvesting' companies tell you when you are thinking about signing up.
Of course it does. And she does.
I suppose that IS an easier way of getting rid of debt than getting pregnant and having the child and selling THAT. /extreme sarcasm tag that shouldn't be needed but probably is...
Leaving on a trip today in a few minutes (just one day but that's bad enough) so can't do any pinging, just thought I'd bring this to your attention!
ping
Well, it worked for Karyn. She was another X-er with massive CC debt who started asking people to send her $1 on her blog, and she raised tens of thousands of dollars. She also got TV spots, a book (and now a novel) and a movie deal out of it.
Selling your eggs may be going too far, but no one blinks twice at men selling their sperm to sperm banks, do they? Or do they? I've never looked into that issue.
http://www.savekaryn.com
I thought Karyn's solution to her problem was creative, but she also did the hard work of looking within and understanding why she was a spend-a-holic and lived too far above her means. I firmly believe that anyone can learn to use their money for good and not evil or self-gratification. And there's a big mental component to why people overspend that isn't nearly examined enough in our Consumeristic Society.
I think the chick in this article is simply a dingbat. It hurts like h#ll to have your eggs harvested. I watched a good friend go through it half a dozen times when she was tyring to get pregnant. It never was successful. ;)
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Most of these women have no idea how very risky this procedure is and that it quite often results in infertility.
The human-ovum industry won't say a word about rupture, bleeding, infection, sterility, and death as sequelae to egg harvesting from a woman's body. They're looking for young women with plenty of college-loan and credit-card debt who are fairly desperate for the money, and naive about long-term consequences.
Thank God and thank the man who loves you, for preventing you from going through with this travesty.
You can also thank God that you don't have unknown child out there who was conceived in vitro from your ovum, gestated in the womb of a hired uterobot, and being raised by a couple of gay guys who see themselves as queer pioneers of a brave new world.
Well, it's no problem for a man who has no principles.
Moral conservatives, however (that is, people with a moral code based on truth, rather than perceived immediate self-interest or gut feelings) would say that sperm-selling, like egg-selling, is morally objectionable because:
It's right in line with the whole damned sexual revolution: taking what God created as a package deal --- honorable married sexual love --- breaking in up, and splitting off parts of it separately (marriage here, but passion over there, pleasure in one deal, childbearing in another deal, eggs in one direction, sperm in another direction) and exploiting the pieces of it for temporary selfish advantage.
Good points. I never really have given it much thought because I know how I've lived my life, and since I can't have kids, fertility was never an issue for me one way or the other. I was blessed with a StepSon when I married my husband (later in life; 35) and two nephews that I helped to raise (they lived with us while their Mom was in and out of rehab most of their lives), so I still had the experience of being a StepMom, which I appreciate. They're all young adults now; in college and/or working.
All of my useless parts still belong to me. Always have, always will. There's no market for them, so you can see how selling off bits of myself never even crossed my mind. ;)
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