Egg donation is being promoted in America and other countries as a way to “help” infertile couples achieve pregnancy through IVF, IUI, and surrogacy. As this practice has become more common in India over the past 10 years, stories have begun to leak out about its dangers; some women have died after egg retrieval procedures, underage girls have become victims of illegal egg harvesting, and there are even unfortunate signs of a black market.
The stories of women who have been abused, exploited, or even killed because of fertility industry practices in India deserve to be told.
What happens during an egg donation?
According to Egg Donor America, to prepare a donor for egg retrieval, a regimen of injected hormones including follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) is administered to promote the growth and maturation of the ova (eggs) within the ovaries.
This takes place within one menstrual cycle in the United States, but in India it has been reported to take “several weeks.” During the retrieval, a needle is inserted through the vaginal wall to “aspirate the follicle fluid which contains the eggs.” Side effects outside of general discomfort from the IV and needles include moderate weight gain, mood changes, headaches, torsion of the ovaries, hemorrhage, infection, injury of the bowels, and mild to severe ovarian hyper-stimulation syndrome (OHSS); OHSS can ultimately lead to blood clots, fluid in the abdomen and lungs, kidney failure, stroke, and death.
However, as Live Action News has reported, these risks are downplayed and painted over with an idyllic and eugenic picture of society.
The hidden deaths of the Indian fertility industry
The current law in India, last updated in 2020, requires that all egg donors must be between the ages of 23 and 35 and requires the donor be a woman who has been married and has “at least one alive child of her own (minimum three years of age). The woman can donate eggs only once in her life and not more than seven eggs can be retrieved from her.”
Despite this, risks to women still exist.
A 23-year-old woman from New Delhi is reported to have died in early 2022 during an egg retrieval procedure. She left behind a husband of seven years and a four-year-old daughter. This woman was undergoing the procedure for IVF purposes and had no known abnormalities in her health history. However, as soon as an egg was removed from her right ovary, her heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen saturation levels all began to drop at an alarming rate. CPR, intubation, medications, and defibrillation were all administered with no success of reviving her, according to the medical report published in the National Library of Medicine. In the end, it was determined that this mother died due to severe OHSS — a side effect of the fertility drugs.
In another case, a 16-year-old girl escaped from a home where she had been forced to undergo an egg retrieval procedure eight times over a five-year period. From 2017 to 2022, the girl was held captive by her mother and her mother’s boyfriend who raped her repeatedly throughout this time. It is unclear whether she was forced to donate multiple embryos following the rapes in addition to unfertilized eggs, or embryos only. Her mother was already a regular egg donor. The mother, a friend, and the boyfriend skirted the law by obtaining a false ID for the girl with a false name and birth year. The girl’s captors were finally arrested on June 3, 2022, and the girl was placed in a government-run home, according to The Quint.
These are two of the more recent cases, but injuries to women date back more than a decade.
Yuma Sherpa, 26, died on January 29, 2014, after her egg retrieval procedure. Her husband has been trying to charge her doctors with medical negligence. His lawyer states that Sherpa even told her doctors “she wanted to back out,” but they “encouraged her to keep going,” according to Women’s eNews.
Sushma Pandey, a 17-year-old girl, died on August 10, 2010 — just two days after being kidnapped from her job as a scrap worker at a warehouse. According to the Times of India, Pandey was drugged and taken to a fertility clinic with the involvement of her employer and a social worker. At the time, egg donation was only legal for women ages 18-25.
They presented Pandey as 20 years old, and this was allegedly confirmed by the clinic. Meanwhile, her mother, Pramila, contacted her daughter’s employer when her daughter did not return home from work. She was told her daughter would be returned safely. On August 9th, when Pandey was found back at her workplace, she told her mother she didn’t feel well and couldn’t remember where she had been the past two days.
Over the following hours, pain in her abdomen increased and she was taken to Rotunda Hospital, and was later transferred to Rajawadi Hospital. She was pronounced dead upon arrival. The hospital’s records later showed that Pandey had donated eggs on at least two other instances within the same year, apparently without her knowledge. In the aftermath of her death, Pandey’s mother fought to hold the doctors accountable for their part in her daughter’s death.
But on August 9, 2024, the doctors were acquitted of any charges of negligence.
Selling eggs for profit
In a snapshot of the greed behind the fertility industry, an Indian gang was caught selling underage girls’ eggs. According to NDTV, a gang of four people, including a husband and wife, had “lured” girls into donating their eggs so they could then sell them for profit. The gang created fake documentation to “prove they were eligible for egg donation.” The girls, usually impoverished, were promised a significant amount of money but only received a portion of it. Meanwhile, the gang sold the girls’ eggs to IVF centers and profited from these girls’ ignorance. The gang’s arrest was made official in November 2023 after one of the girls’ mothers called the police.
The tragic endings to many young women and girls — more than those mentioned here — shed light on the dangers of the fertility industry and its lack of ethics and oversight. While posing as a benefit to infertile couples, the fertility industry frequently takes advantage of the impoverished, and dehumanizes and kills women and children.
