Egg Harvesting

Women’s Forum Australia highlights that egg harvesting has significant health, ethical and social repercussions for the status and treatment of women, yet it offers no health benefits to the supplier herself...

Women Forum is concerned that commercial trade in eggs leads to exploitation of women, particularly economically disadvantaged women...

Women’s Forum believes that policy and law makers in Australia should act in accordance with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and the Council of Europe’s Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine which includes prohibition in making the human body and its parts a source of financial gain.

Quick Facts

• In the debate about egg harvesting for cloning research the ethical and policy implications of egg harvesting are treated largely as a side issue. Despite this, egg harvesting has significant health, ethical and social repercussions for the status and treatment of women.
• In a study of 33 former egg donors, nine reported “a week or more of discomfort so significant that it kept them from working, or interfered with their ability to care for their children.”[1]
• Up to 10% of women who undergo the process of egg harvesting experience ovarian hyper stimulation syndrome (OHSS). Serious symptoms of OHSS can require hospitalisation and include unintended pregnancy, renal failure, intrauterine polyps, ovarian cysts, thromboembolism, adult respiratory distress and haemorrhage from ovarian rupture and infertility.[2]
• OHSS can necessitate one or both of the ovaries being removed.[3]
• Advocates of research cloning have failed to demonstrate that it is possible to source sufficient eggs to make cloning viable without harm to women.
• There is evidence that the commercial trade in eggs leads to exploitation of women, particularly economically disadvantaged – the high price paid for egg cells incites and encourages donation, given the relative poverty of the donors.[4]

Submissions

Women's Forum has at present not made any submissions about egg harvesting

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