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.'
eBay rocks!!
Advances in technology have now made it possible to procreate apart from sexual relations through the meeting in vitro of the germ-cells previously taken from the man and the woman. But what is technically possible is not for that very reason morally admissible. Rational reflection on the fundamental values of life and of human procreation is therefore indispensable for formulating a moral evaluation of such technological interventions on a human being from the first stages of his development.
DONUM VITAE Vatican document - Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation.
The slippery slope grows slicker.
Catholic Ping
Please freepmail me if you want on/off this list
Great--when your kid starts to talk, he'll have a cockney accent!
So you would pay to buy the eggs of someone that doesn't have the brain power to run their own life? Would this lead to the kind of world depicted in Mike Judge's new movie, Idiocracy?
'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.
But she needed that Louis Vuitton hand bag NOW!!!!
Who wants eggs with genes for that kind of stupidity?
I have a feeling mum would have said the same had daughter told her she was going to be a stripper or a prostitute.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
I'm going down to the grocery store, buy a dozen and auction them. ;o)
She's clearly not that intelligent, and her looks, while not altogether unpleasant, aren't going to have complete strangers lining up to have children who potentially will look like her. So, why, exactly, is this a good idea? Isn't she taking the same sort of mentality that got her into credit problems, to an entirely different level?
*************
What a role model. I wonder if her mother has suggested other ways a young woman might "get a bit of money". The money's the thing, after all.
Then the gay men have to find a "womb for rent."
And that face, bless her heart.
More to the point, how long before she racks up just as large or larger a debt? And when it's racked up, will she still be young enough to sell eggs?
I'd have to disagree with your comments on her looks.
Quite an attractive young Brit, IMHO.
However, to each their own. Maybe cause she's closer in age to me...she's 26, I'm 27...I don't know.
You're right though...not too much intelligence there if she racked up that much credit card debt.
...if stupidity got us into this mess, maybe stupidity can get us out of it.
Are those Rhode Island Reds, White Leghorns, or Plymouth Rocks?
Over easy or scrambled.....
Sounds to me like she was resourceful in getting out of debt. Shows creativity. Don't be so quick to judge.
Besides...I think it's a "nature vs. nurture" thing anyway. The kid will grow up under more financially secure parents, most likely.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.