Those opposed to surrogacy, what are your views on egg donation?

[wholeeverything]

I'm a gender critical woman with a high degree of skepticism about commercial surrogacy. I'm also facing the possibility of never having my own child.

Thinking hard about egg donation, I am conflicted about my own views about the ethics of it, from the point of view of the egg donor. What are your views? I am particularly interested in the views of those opposed to surrogacy. Do you see it as the same issue?

I feel like I cannot think objectively because of my own fertility issues. I am personally fine with the ethics of the child's rights, in that I would view it as similar to adoption with a child having the right to know their biological origins, and that then being something for me to decide if I am OK with at a personal level. Where there is full transparency, I don't see it as violating the child's rights.

But what about the young women selling eggs? Is it invasive, dangerous? Should it be viewed like surrogacy or selling an organ? Is it only considered by women in financial hardship, i.e. effectively coerced?

I don’t think it’s fair on the child. They don’t get a choice.

According to google's AI, and I have no reason to think this is wrong

A woman is born with a fixed number of eggs (called oocytes), starting with about 1 to 2 million at birth. No new eggs are ever created during a woman's lifetime. 1, 2, 3]

Egg Count by Age

• Fetus (20 weeks): Peak supply of about 6 to 7 million immature eggs.
• At birth: About 1 to 2 million eggs remain.
• By puberty: Roughly 300,000 to 500,000 eggs remain.
• Age 30: About 70,000 to 100,000 eggs remain.
• Age 40: About 10,000 eggs remain.
• Menopause (average age 51): Fewer than 1,000 eggs remain, and natural fertility ends.

I just want to add that natural fertility can end many years before the menopause. This is because human eggs are very prone to chromosomal abnormalities, and the percentage of abnormal eggs increases as a woman ages. A 45-year-old woman might still be ovulating and menstruating every month, yet her egg quality could be uniformly poor.

@Chickadeeinme I’m not sure what your point is - the pp was wrong about quantities of eggs typically retrieved but this has no bearing on the major risks involved in the treatment, which can leave women infertile and cause terminal cancer. Not to mention that - as we’ve already discussed on this thread - it’s possible that a woman’s donated egg leads to a baby for someone else while her own treatment is unsuccessful.

Do you at least accept now that women in the U.K. receive meaningful financial incentives to donate their eggs?

You keep repeating the claim that IVF leads to cancer.

As someone who has been unfortunate enough to be involved in multiple rounds of egg collection, there is no evidence that it causes cancer. I’m pretty bloody invested in doing what I can to stay alive for my children (like, hopefully, most mums) so I’ve read the longitudinal studies at length.

However, as someone who needed IVF, my underlying condition makes me more prone to getting cancer. They can’t prove a link between IVF and cancer but there is a link between the existence of certain gynae conditions and going on to develop ovarian or uterine cancer. There is also a link due to ART mums typically having fewer children & therefore breastfeeding less. The fact you had IVF is not, to date, a causal link.

Repeating unsubstantiated claims without evidence makes it incredibly easy for the other side to ignore everything you go on to say.

A friend of mine is dying of ovarian cancer which has been confirmed to have been caused by her IVF treatments. The risk was explained to her, in writing and verbally, before she had the treatment. It is a small risk and she was told that before she had the treatment, and obviously never thought it would happen to her, but now won’t see her child grow up.

ETA: I haven’t seen the paperwork she signed but she has been very clear with me that (a) the cause is known to have been the treatments and (b) she has no recourse against the clinic because she signed the consent forms. She is a lawyer so I trust that she is correct on both fronts.

A single person does not outweigh the studies of hundreds of thousands of women, however desperately sad it is for your friend.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6974869/

This one came up almost immediately.

Given that the risk of ovarian cancer caused by the treatment was something she expressly consented to, it’s obviously a known risk, not confined to my one friend.

Ag yes, Iran in conflict: an excellent source of well-funded research.

Here’s more recent Australia and Dutch studies that confirm the opposite.

https://www.nki.nl/news-events/news/no-increased-long-term-risk-of-ovarian-cancer-after-in-vitro-fertilization

https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2026/03/IVF-not-linked-higher-cancer-rates

So there’s academic disagreement then, rather than no studies at all showing this, as you said originally?

The fact the researchers in that study were based in Iran is irrelevant - it’s a literature review, ie, based on research studies carried out by others.

It is a fact that the clinic who treated my friend has accepted that her cancer was likely caused by the treatment she had, and that their standard consent forms lists this as a known risk.

The unsw study says ovarian cancers are more common following IVF, but overall rates of cancer remain unchanged.
Sounds like the evidence is mixed.

It's very complicated. Some conditions which cause infertility are also linked to higher rates of ovarian cancer. I saw one study in which suggested that the extra risk didn't appear to apply to women undergoing IVF for male-factor infertility. The same study also found that the extra risk didn't appear to increase with additional IVF cycles.

However, the risk of ovarian cancer/borderline ovarian tumours did appear to be at its highest in the three years following IVF, which suggests that the treatment itself could be a risk factor.

In my friend’s case, she was having IVF because she was going it alone as a solo mum, so didn’t actually have any fertility issues other than being older (early 40s). She had many many cycles before finally conceiving on what would have been the last attempt permitted by the clinic.

Others have dealt with the cancer issue and I think your view is mainly formed by one sad experience of someone close to you. I’m sorry about your friend.

I don’t consider that amount of money a meaningful inducement, especially when it also has to cover expenses involved in travel to many medical appointments including meals and possibly accommodation. Even if those were minimal it’s not particularly life-changing or supplying an actual income. The situation in the USA is quite different.

I did the same although I was 35 and only had one complete IVF cycle, which was successful (another attempt was cancelled before egg retrieval due to a poor response).

Given that pregnancy (especially multiple pregnancies) is thought to reduce the risk of ovarian cancer, I would be interested to see if the risk of ovarian cancer differs depending on whether the IVF was successful or not.

I'm now 44 and recently had an ovarian dermoid cyst removed. It wasn't a borderline ovarian tumour, but I do wonder if my IVF might have had something to do with my ovary's bizarre decision to grow a lump containing hair, a tooth, fluid and goodness knows what else.

If by “dealt with the cancer issue” you mean established that there is a body of research that shows what I’ve said is correct, then yes.

On the finance side, you’ve chosen to focus on the £985 fee (despite initially saying that it didn’t exist) and are now claiming that that’s a negligible amount. To the young students who are targeted it most certainly is not. But you’ve also ignored the massive price reductions - worth thousands of pounds - that are available to women who undergo “egg sharing” as part of their own treatment.

And ignored the multiple comments from women on this thread about the desperateness they felt while going through fertility treatment and how they therefore consider these incentives to be coercive.

What you said about cancer was not established as correct by pp but contradicted. I understand that because of your friend this feels painful and personal to you.

Treatment on the NHS is free. My DD had three rounds of that. Certainly there is a price reduction for women who have eggs available to share, but this is a treatment they were undergoing in any case - the reduction isn’t inducing anyone to donate who was not already undergoing treatment and already having eggs harvested.

You have your head in the sand on this.

@Chickadeeinme it’s pointless debating with you when you are determined to ignore evidence that doesn’t support your own position.

The academic evidence on cancer is mixed. How you can read the thread and conclude there is no evidence when links to the research have been posted is beyond me.

Similarly, your attempts to downplay the huge financial incentives in the fertility industry which are there to encourage women at their most vulnerable and desperate to donate their eggs are embarrassing. You can check your own privilege if you think that these vast sums of money don’t make a difference to people but surely aren’t so blind as to refuse to accept that they might be meaningful to people less well off than you.

as someone who does not wish to have children, I have considered the possibility of egg donation before. I know it would be a tortuous process but I do feel as though it would be such a joy to provide to another family.

The main reason that I am put off the idea is that I categorically do not want children, and the idea that someone may appear in my life at 18 and say “you’re my real mum” terrifies me. I wouldn’t want a relationship with them and therefore I think it’s almost unfair to go ahead with it as it wouldn’t be the persons fault they want to know their biological parent.

I would perhaps consider doing it for a friend on the basis that I’d already be in the child’s life as an ‘aunty’ and at a certain age the child could be told what really happened. That way it wouldn’t be so jarring for anyone involved. I’d also consider being a surrogate for a friend if they couldn’t do this themselves (for the same reasons above)
though I note there are some different ethical concerns and arguments involved in that aspect.

@VarioPerfect it feels equally pointless debating with you because you are so determined to ignore what many people on this thread have told you about their positive experiences and the fact that the evidence on cancer is very far from conclusive. Come back to me on the issue of financial inducement when you can find women in the UK who have donated eggs without having fertility treatment of their own purely because of being paid expenses of £985.

It’s not equivalent. I’m not at all ignoring the people on this thread who have said egg donation is brilliant - on the contrary I’m pointing out that all of those people - you included - have massively benefited in circumstances where all the potential risks (to health and fertility for the donor, to a sense of self and access to their genetic parent for the child) are carried by other people.

No one has come on this thread as an egg donor and talked of any positive experience. Everyone who goes through IVF knows that it is physically and mentally demanding and miserable.

Unlike you, I don’t have any skin in this game as I’ve never benefitted from donor eggs nor been a donor. I have, however, firsthand evidence of the damage that the treatment can cause. It’s clearly considered a material risk by the IVF clinics as there is no way they would be including it in their literature and flagging it to patients if they didn’t have to.

As for the financial incentives, your complete failure to acknowledge what is blindingly obvious (that clinics encourage donation through financial means) is both embarrassing for you and undermines everything else you have said.

https://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&client=ms-android-samsung-rvo1&source=android-browser&q=egg+donation+for+money+uk

Scroll down and see the headline from one agency which is clearly targetting donors who are interested in payments

How many women have actually done this who were not already undergoing their own fertility treatment?