The Egg
January 07, 2025 at 12:30AMEggs harvested from young women are helping infertile couples around the world have children. For the risks they run, they’re paid, usually in the low thousands; by the time a baby is eventually born, “they will have generated revenue for doctors, agents, airlines, lawyers, counselors, couriers, insurers and drug companies.” Bloomberg’s impressively comprehensive year-long investigation follows women (and girls) from India, Greece, Taiwan, and Argentina whose extracted eggs gift the gift of life to other women they’ll never know. (Subscription required.)
By law, egg donors in India must be at least 23.
But her only piece of identification, a school record from the state government, shows her as 13.
The truth is, she doesn’t know her age, and neither does her mother. This isn’t particularly unusual at the lower rungs of Indian society, where millions of births go unregistered. The girl is in seventh grade.
To get around the law, she must present as a woman. For this, she has help. Her grandmother’s neighbor, a woman named Seema, is a fixer of sorts, an agent, according to police records. It was Seema, the girl will say, who put all this in motion. Seema persuaded her to sell her eggs. Seema had her pose for a photo for a fake ID. Seema drilled her on the story she had to tell: wedded, with two children. On the raft of forms for the clinic, Seema had her own husband sign off as the girl’s spouse.
The girl trusted Seema, who’d told her she could earn as much as 15,000 rupees ($180). For a gift of life it’s a paltry sum, but for the girl it would be enough to buy what she longed for—a smartphone. So she heeded Seema’s advice: Don’t tell anyone, not even your mother.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/01/06/the-egg/
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