It is absolutely ethical to sell anything that legally is yours - hair, toenails, ovum. It is also completely ethical for them to use them for fertilization and to have a baby of their own. If adoption is ethical, then delivering a baby that is not 100% genetically yours is just as ethical. You should learn all about the medical procedure and the risks, but helping someone else to have a child while helping yourself to make a better life for your eventual family is a good thing.

Man... 15k for an egg I'm not using anyway?

Then I look over at my son and I see that his cheekbones are high like mine. He has that same crooked little smile that I used to at his age. I can't imagine having a part of me, half me, somewhere, out there, and not knowing it.

I don't think I could do it.

But I'm not sure I fault anyone else for doing it, if they've thought of the potential emotional impact it might have on them and the child later in life, when the child wants to meet them and wonders about them... it happens in adoption, and it would likely happen here too. Children can love their parents, but there's an innate desire to want to know where we come from, who we look like, etc.

It's a big choice to make, and probably bigger than most are giving it credit for being.

I don't see anything wrong with it. The price of a decent education these days is ridiculous, and it takes years of work even with a high paying job to pay it all off. College students have been making good use of their young, healthy bodies for years to make money - blood donation, sperm donation, plasma donation, research groups and studies - so I don't see why women selling ova is any different than the rest. Yes, it hopefully leads to a baby being born, but so does sperm donation, and as far as I'm aware, men are compensated for that with money as well.

Ova donators receive more money simply because the process is much more involved and painful than sperm donation. Women can't just go into a room with magazines of cute guys and come out ten minutes later with a jar of ova for another family to use. It involves weeks of injections and invasive treatments and seeing doctors.

In the end, short of murder or abuse or various illegal activities, I can't think of much that would push me to say it's ethically wrong for a student to do something if it pays for their education. If they can find a way to make money in the horrible economy right now without hurting someone else, there's not much I see a problem with. Sure, the family receiving it might have done better to adopt a child instead of going through the whole process, but couples want a newborn who looks like them, and most of the children up for adoption in this country aren't exactly white newborns. But that's more their problem, and less the fault of the woman trying to do anything she can to pay for a good education.

I think that those women have a choice and if someone is going to pay you that much for them then go for it. If your able to sell your eggs and get out of debt I say go for it. Its not like you can go donate them anywher for free. They use too much equitment to take the eggs from you so someone has got to pay for it. And its sad but its those women who cant produce there own eggs. I would say it is not un ethical, but thats just my opinion.

I'm torn on this one. To my own human mind, this sort of thing is totally o.k. If a woman chooses to sell her eggs, that's up to her, (it's her body), especially if they go to women who can't produce their own children. It's even a nice thing to do in that regard. It's exactly the same as a man being paid for his sperm.
However, God might not approve. It seems to me that He would applaud someone trying to help a woman to have a family, but I doubt that He would like the money exchanging hands. A human is not a saleable commodity; the slave-trade was a perfect example of humans trying to do that which is not ethical. People can never really be bought or sold, (some football teams may object though!), so should a baby, or those ingredients which would make a baby, be bought or sold? I don't think so. It might be more appropriate to donate them rather than sell them.

Hmm... in terms of chromosomal DNA, it's no different than a guy donating sperm, but there is also the mitochondrial DNA, which only comes from the mother... still... it shouldn't make that much difference.

So why do people... males included... have a knee-jerk reaction that the eggs are a lot more valuable than sperm.

I mean, yeah we know that women only get about 300-400 egg cells to select from to make kids from her whole life, whereas with males, a single ejaculation has about 70 million sperm, which means if need be, with one shot, a one guy could repopulate all of Italy, but I bet if you went to a non-technical part of the world where such science is not known, there would still be something about it which would seem different, and I think it has to do with subconsciously associating the egg to the womb, as if they're parts of the same thing.

We feel like if a woman sells one of her eggs, it's like she's selling part of her womb. On a scientific level we know that's not true at all, but that's we feel that on a emotive level.

Hmm... technically there's nothing wrong with it, because if she doesn't use them, they just get flushed away on a periodic basis, so if one can be purely scientific and objective about it, then go for it... sperm are common, but eggs are not, so it's saving an egg that otherwise would not be put to life.

However... analyze your heart, and if you feel that it's just not going to feel natural enough for you to break the association between egg and womb, then don't, because you'll spend your life fretting about it.

Although... hmm... what if it were to be thought of as anti-abortion?

I mean... what if a woman had an abortion when she was a teen, and then went on to have kids as an adult, but is feeling guilty about the abortion. What if she could be shown to see donation of an egg as a way to cancel the moral conundrum she's still feeling about the abortion? A child was lost that could have been born... now a child shall be born that would have washed away.

Just a thought. I'm a guy, so the best I can do is speculate.

Just keep in mind that what you're talking about there isn't even tissue.

Tissue, like cells of fat and skin, have a full diploid set of chromosomes, whereas an egg cell has only half the chromosomes required to be even just a single cell of hair follicle, so from your body's point of view, it's less than donating a stem cell.

However you think about it, like abortions, the decision has to be left up to the woman.

Yes, it is ethical, but there have been problems with young women selling too many eggs, then not being able to become pregnant later when they want to. You do not have an unlimited supply of eggs, so every egg you have extracted is one less chance you have to have your own child.

I don't see anything wrong with it, and the money could be used for worse things than college! God may hate abortion, but unfertilized eggs aren't babies and surely could bring a blessing to a family who desires children and can't have their own.

It's true that there are already many children who need adopted, but these children often have emotional scars or mental illnesses that the adoptive parents may not be equipped to handle, and these issues may even be kept secret from them until it's too late. Brand-new babies are a clean slate, and may still have a genetic tendency toward emotional issues, but the parents don't have to try to undo the damage already caused.

I thought it was ethical until I realized that I am not genetically desirable and noone would want my offspring because of asthma and other family history.

Hmmmm, it makes survival of the fittest take on a whole new meaning.

But if you are considering selling your eggs, and people want to buy it, I say go for it. A word of caution though, its not like a trip to the sperm bank.

You would have to inject yourself with hormones and make multiple visits to the doctor's office.