Culture Challenge of the Week: Reproductive Exploitation

Jennifer Lahl, president of The Center for Bioethics and Cultural Network, is a kind, deeply caring woman. A health care worker for 25 years, she’s seen medical care at its best—when it gives fresh hope and renewed health to suffering patients.

These days, Jennifer is a passionate advocate on behalf of young women who’ve experienced medical care at its worst. In the upside-down world of assisted reproduction, too many fertility specialists have dashed the hopes and compromised the health of previously healthy young women—egg donors.

Next month, Jennifer’s award-winning documentary, Eggsploitation, will play across college campuses, warning young women about the dangers of egg donation. The film follows several young women who underwent egg donation as a way to pay tuition or dig themselves out of debt--they also welcomed the emotional payoff of helping an infertile couple have a child.

But for these women, donating their eggs triggered serious complications resulting in infertility, disability, and lingering health problems. One woman nearly died.

Nobody told them egg donation could end up this way.

As infertility climbs, so does . Most of us know families whose children were created with help from fertility specialists or who owe their existence to egg donors. And nothing I say here intends to minimize the pain of infertility. But the fact remains that young women---my own daughter’s peer group—are being exploited as egg donors.

Our young women need to know the truth.