Why young women are donating their eggs
14:16 Share

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

Available now on The Documentary from the BBC World Service, Stephen Coates takes you to the Morse Code World Championships. In an internet-connected world, Morse Code, the alphabet of dots and dashes, might now feel from a different era. I'm meeting some of the people who are keeping the code alive. Morse Code, ready to transmit. Listen now by searching The Documentary, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

So join me in the

fun. Sign up now at ChumbaCasino.com. Sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Void where prohibited by law. 18 plus. Terms and conditions apply.

Hello and welcome to this episode of What in the World from the BBC World Service. I'm Hannah Gelbart. Now, donating your eggs to someone who can't conceive naturally seems like a pretty selfless thing to do. And in some parts of the world, it's also a way to make money. In the US, for example, there are ads for egg donors on uni campuses and on social media. It's seen as a way to help students pay off their bills, their loans, even just to go on holiday. The

The process itself does carry some risks and different countries have different laws about how much women can be paid if they're paid at all. So today you're going to hear from some women who have decided to donate their eggs and we're going to have a look at how it works in different parts of the world.

To talk us through it, I'm here in the studio with Charlotte Edwards, a BBC business reporter. Hello and welcome to the podcast. Hello, thank you for having me. It's great to have you. So you're a business reporter and actually you've been researching the business side of this. But before we get into that, can you just talk me through what the actual process of donating your eggs involves? So a lot of people don't realise how invasive the procedure actually is. You inject a lot of hormones and then you go through an egg scraping process where essentially you're put to

to sleep and a needle is inserted and eggs are removed and you might produce up to 10 eggs. And you're given all those hormones because naturally women would produce one egg a month and suddenly you're having to have 10 that are ripe and ready to go. Yeah, you want as many as possible. Can anyone do it? Are there restrictions on who can donate their eggs? There are restrictions and it depends what part of the world you're in. In the UK generally it's 18 to 34 or 35. You have to be that age but then even if you are that age you have to be

medically well enough and also mentally well enough because it is quite a big process to go through. There's a lot of physical and mental situations that you need to put yourself through. So everybody that wants to donate will go through a very strict process before they're even allowed to go in to start doing the hormones. And part of that process is they check you and they screen you for all kinds of genetic diseases and all of that. Yes.

What are the side effects of this very invasive process that you've described? So generally, most women are told that the side effects will be minor. But of course, with any procedure and one that's quite invasive, there can be more extreme side effects. Some people have ended up in menopause early or they've had swollen ovaries. Some people have had blood clots. So it's not a decision to take lightly. But then a lot of other women just have symptoms which are like a heavy period or just menstrual cramps, things like that.

Some people have a lot of symptoms and some people don't really have any at all. And we're born with a finite number of eggs. So donating a number of them, 10, 20, could it possibly affect our fertility down the line?

We don't actually have that much research on how it will affect our fertility, but it can do. Say if the procedure went wrong or you had some sort of reaction to the hormonal treatment, then it could affect your fertility. But in general, it's not supposed to because the idea is women are going to be producing these eggs anyway.

So why not give one away, give 10 away, and then you're still going to go through the process yourself and naturally produce eggs. You're giving away your eggs, which means that people with your DNA might be walking around the earth in years to come. Is there any way for your potential children to contact you in the future?

So again, it depends what country you're in. In the UK, legally, they are allowed to contact you once they turn 18. However, you as a donor have no responsibility to speak to them. If you don't want to, you have no financial obligation towards your biological children that are born in this way. It's different in different countries. I know in Spain, for example, you can donate anonymously and then that biological child could never find out who their biological parents

mother or say sperm donation father was and in 2022 Colorado became the first state in America to say it's illegal to donate if you're not going to provide this information so that a future child can contact you. As we heard some students in the US are donating their eggs because they can be paid quite a lot for it. How much money can you make from it?

So in the UK, which is why I started researching it, I was actually so heavily advertised to donate my own eggs on TikTok that that's why I started to do the research. In the UK, it used to be that you got about £750. That's recently gone up to £985. So that's a bit more than $1,000. Yes.

And it's not a payment in the UK. It's illegal to pay someone for their eggs. It's compensation. So you're supposed to spend it on travel and any travel expenses. People don't necessarily have to do that, but it is a compensation. Whereas in the US, people get a lot more. They can get $5,000. I spoke to one woman who was paid $12,000 for her donation process and she used that money to move abroad.

Does the US stand out as the place where women can be paid the most for it? I would say the US definitely stands out because it's not...

not one set payment so a lot of people do just receive about five thousand dollars which is obviously still a lot of money but it depends on the quality of your eggs and how many times you've donated so people can receive tens of thousands of dollars there I know Spain you generally get over a thousand euros sometimes even double that or more depending on how many times you've donated so it really does depend where you're donating the clinic and sometimes the quality of your eggs and your age.

So we've heard about the financial benefits of donating in some countries. What are some of the other reasons that women give for donating their eggs? I actually spoke to a non-binary person who is a black lesbian and they donated because they realised their community was one of the most underserved communities when it came to donating eggs. A lot of people want to have a

child that is the same background as them. In the UK especially, the most donors are white women. So people might feel they want to donate because they want to help people like them also have a family.

Now you're going to hear from two women who have donated their eggs. First up is Elaine, who has donated three times here in the UK. I remember when I first heard about egg donation, I was at university and there was a lecturer who came in to talk to us about gamete donation, what that means. And I remember she was saying that there was a shortage of ethnic minority egg donors. And the fact that

Because there was such a shortage, there were long waiting lists, it occurred to me that, oh, there are all these people who are Chinese heritage who also experience fertility problems and they're trying to start a family but they just don't have the egg donors.

to match what they're looking for. And the professor was talking about how they wanted tall people to donate and the fact that they wanted people who are in higher education to donate. And I just thought, oh my gosh, the three things. I'm tall, I'm ethnic minority and I'm in higher education right now. And I thought,

She's talking to me. She put that idea in my head that, oh, maybe this is something that I really want to do and I could help families feel more complete. And she said that, oh, there's quite a lot of money in egg donation. And I just remember the whole lecture hall was like, ooh. As a result of my donation in 2017, there was a boy that was born in 2018. When I went to ask if there had been any more offspring, they said that the rest of my eggs had been frozen for sibling use.

So that family got all the eggs from 2017 and so far they've been frozen as embryos, potentially to be this boy's younger siblings. I don't really feel like I'm a mum because the thing is with egg donation is that I didn't carry this child in pregnancy. I haven't given birth to this child so I'm not really mothering this child. I feel, I see it as like when you do egg donation you give a gift or this one-off gift to a family who really really want it.

Now let's hear from someone in Nigeria who has donated her eggs. Ebimo Ibinabu Danasisa. Hi. Hello. Hi. So what were your reasons for donating? My reasons were basically, I think, first and foremost, curiosity, because I knew people donated their eggs and in vitro fertilization and all of that, but I didn't know that we did that in Nigeria. So when I came across somebody's

advertisement looking for egg donuts on WhatsApp. I was like, oh, that's interesting. And I thought that it would be an interesting experience for me to go through the process personally and sort of like write about it. So I think that was my major motivation. What was the process like for you? It was a bit intense. It was a bit surprising, mostly because I didn't have all of the information going in.

in. So it was just like more or less mostly a discovery for me. So it wasn't as easy as I imagined it would be. It was also pretty painful. Can you talk me through the different stages of the process? Like what happened? What involved? Okay. So first I was put on oral contraceptives. I was then put on injections to stimulate my ovaries into producing more eggs and

and after I had taken the injections for I think two weeks I went back to the hospital for a transvaginal scan where they were able to ascertain okay the eggs are ready for harvesting they sent me back with a specific injection that I had to refrigerate and take at a certain point I think it was like 10.30pm at night once I had

had taken that injection. I went back to the hospital the next morning and once I got to the hospital, I went in for the egg extraction. Put on anesthesia. When I woke up a few hours later, the eggs had already been extracted. I went home that same day and I spent the next week recovering. Did you have any side effects from it?

Yeah, it was like a PMS, maybe like 10 times worse than a PMS. So I assume it's a lot like being pregnant in like the first trimester. So there was nausea, there was like a lot of tenderness in the chest area, my appetite skyrocketed, basically.

and I was hungry all the time. And I was also quite tired a lot. And taking the injections, it was really quite taxing on my body because there was breakouts all over my face. I was like really sensitive emotionally. Yeah, so I would say it's like what PMS is for like way worse. Is it something that women are paid for in Nigeria? Were you paid yourself?

Yes, it is something that women are paid for and it was about 120,000 naira. But you had to give 10,000, I think, to the person who introduced you and 10,000 to the head nurse, something like that. So it ended up being around 100,000, which based on the processes we had gone through was ridiculously underpaid. Did you ever find out who got your eggs?

No, so there wasn't really some sort of follow up after. So I actually don't know if like a viable fetus came out of the egg donation or not. And I suspect that if I went back to the hospital to ask, they probably wouldn't even remember anything.

So would there be any way for your genetic children, if the eggs were used successfully, would there be any way for them to contact you? There would probably be because, like I said, I filled out a basic form with my details and I think my phone number was on there. It's possible.

So Charlotte, how does egg donation work in different parts of the world? So it really varies, like we've already spoken about with your age. Obviously, the compensation is different in all parts of the world. And who can donate their eggs is also different in different parts of the world. That's often why Spain is considered the egg donation capital of Europe, because the laws there are different.

are quite relaxed on who can donate and who can receive eggs. You don't necessarily have to be married. You can be in a same-sex relationship. So it's really popular to donate in Spain, for example. And is that age limit, the 18 to 35 we've been talking about, is that because your eggs are better when you're younger? They kind of go off as you get older? Yes. So as females age, their egg quality declines and it can also be tougher on your body to go through that IVF process.

process essentially when you're older as well. So it's generally for your health and also the quality of the eggs.

And is this something that happens all around the world or are there some countries where it's not allowed? There are some countries where it's not allowed. Turkey, for example, it is illegal to donate eggs and sperm there. Some Islamic communities believe that an egg cannot be inseminated with another person's sperm if it's not your husband. So that makes it more complicated because you couldn't just give an egg away to someone and not know what was going to happen to that egg. So it really depends what...

What's like the general belief in certain countries? And we're talking about this because you yourself have seen ads for it on TikTok. It's all over socials targeting women of a certain age. Would you think of doing it yourself? Oh,

It's a really difficult question. And I don't think I ever considered it until I started researching the topic and speaking to a lot of egg donors. And they all had these selfless reasons for doing it. It really did make me think whether I would do it one day. It's not something I had considered before.

I wouldn't necessarily do it for financial reasons. It would be a selfless act, I guess, to help someone who couldn't have a child. So I think I would consider it, yeah. It's a really, really interesting subject and it's something that is just so personal, isn't it? Charlotte, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you for having me. Thank you. And thank you for joining us for this episode of What's in the World from the BBC World Service. I'm Hannah Gelbart. Do check out some of our other episodes. We'll be back with another one soon. See you then. Bye. Bye.

Available now on The Documentary from the BBC World Service, Stephen Coates takes you to the Morse Code World Championships. In an internet-connected world, Morse Code, the alphabet of dots and dashes, might now feel from a different era. I'm meeting some of the people who are keeping the code alive. Morse Code, ready to transmit. Listen now by searching The Documentary, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

It is Ryan here and I have a question for you. What do you do when you win? Like, are you a fist pumper? A woohooer? A hand clapper? A high fiver? If you want to hone in on those winning moves, check out Chumba Casino. Choose from hundreds of social casino style games for your chance to redeem serious cash prizes. There are new game releases weekly plus free daily bonuses. So don't wait. Start having the most fun ever at chumbacasino.com. Sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW.

Void where prohibited by law. 18 plus. Terms and conditions apply.