"The afternoon sun shines on the woman in a commuter-town cafe, highlighting her almond-shaped eyes and pale skin, a look often sought after by couples who need an egg to have a baby. "I have good eggs," she laughs good enough that she guesses she's a biological mother to at least 30 children. The 34-year-old woman requests we withhold her full name, because to survive, she sells her eggs, which is illegal in India."
"Producing multiple eggs isn't easy on the human body. Typically a woman in her reproductive years will release one egg a month it's either fertilized or flushed out with her period. But when H has a commission, she'll inject herself with hormones for days to stimulate her ovaries to produce 20 to 30 eggs at a time. While she's under anesthesia, a health worker inserts a long thin needle through the wall of H's vagina to retrieve those eggs from her ovaries."
A 34-year-old woman in Mumbra, India, sells her eggs illegally to survive and estimates having undergone about 30 retrievals over five years. She injects hormones for days to stimulate her ovaries and typically produces 20 to 30 eggs per cycle, which are retrieved under anesthesia via a needle through the vaginal wall. Doctors tell her the eggs are high quality, and clinics pay between $280 and $800 per retrieval, amounts above many monthly wages. Selling eggs remains illegal but is an open secret that supplies the for-profit fertility industry.
Read at www.npr.org
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