I often make comparisons between smoking, and the Big Tobacco industry, and the practice of egg “donation” and what I call Big Fertility. I use quotation marks around the words donate or donation, because most often women are paid to sell their eggs, they aren’t donating them. Both smoking and selling your eggs are harmful to your health, but these industries make millions of dollars peddling their goods to people.
Similarly, egg “donation” also depends heavily on advertisements to recruit young women for their eggs, luring them in with large sums of cash to “be an angel” and “help someone have a family.” Celebrities such as Elton John, Andy Cohen, and Anderson Cooper, all had their babies because women risked their health by selling their eggs to them.
In the early days of all the slick smoking promotion, there were no warning labels on cigarettes, restrictions on where you could smoke, or warnings about secondhand smoking as the studies on risks and harms to those who smoked had not yet been done. So, Big Tobacco was able to operate free from regulations and restrictions until 1965 when Congress passed the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act, which required the warning “Caution: Cigarette Smoking May Be Hazardous to Your Health” be placed in small print on one side of the cigarette package. By 1969, this warning was changed to say, “Warning: The Surgeon General Has Determined That Cigarette Smoking Is Dangerous to Your Health.”
“Egg donation involves a screening process. Not all potential egg donors are selected. Not all selected egg donors receive the monetary amounts or compensation advertised. As with any medical procedure, there may be risks associated with human egg donation. Before an egg donor agrees to begin the egg donation process, and signs a legally binding contract, she is required to receive specific information on the known risks of egg donation. Consultation with your doctor prior to entering into a donor contract is advised.”But, like Big Tobacco who lobbied and fought tooth and nail to not have to warn people of the risks, Big Fertility lobbied too. And they won, by getting this language inserted into the law:
Persons or entities that certify compliance with the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) guidelines by registering with ASRM are exempt from the notice requirements set forth in subdivision (a). Use of the exemption when the guidelines are violated shall constitute false advertising. (Emphasis mine).ASRM is in bed with Big Fertility. They’re the roosters guarding the hen house and their guidelines are meaningless because they’re not enforceable; like a suggested donation at the museum, they can be ignored and are ignored as I’ve yet to see any advertisements in California that include the language set out in A.B. 1317.