There is some disturbing proposed legislation in Arizona that would ban compensated egg donation. Republican Rep. Nancy Barton, the sponsor of the bill, would have her constituents believe:

“It’s illegal to sell any other human body part, and here we have an ongoing situation where human eggs are being sold at all sorts of varying prices,” said Barto.

Barto said women collect anywhere from $2,500 to $10,000 when they donate their eggs. She said offering women that much money for their eggs encourages them to donate for the wrong reasons.

“Some demographics would be more prone to exploitation than others,” she said. “Poor, disenfranchised women might be more apt to respond to that lure and incentive and be taken advantage of and I think that’s a real concern.”

With all due respect to Ms. Barto, she is full of it. This is nothing more than a transparent attempt to infringe upon the constitutionally protected right to procreate. Ms. Barto, as do many of her colleagues in the Republican party across the country, have moral and philosophical objections to assisted reproduction and choice. This is just another attempt to restrict access by infertility patients to services such as egg donation and surrogacy.

Prohibiting compensation does not advance the cause of informed consent. If Ms. Barto was legitimately concerned about ensuring that potential egg donors were fully informed of the risks and ramifications of proceeding with an egg retrieval, then she could have done so. As an example, she could have codified the American Society of Reproductive Medicine’s Guidelines on egg donation that are already voluntarily adhered to by most fertility clinics and donor programs across the country. Instead, she sought to impose a reimbursement-only model that has failed miserably around the world and has led to waiting lists of years for infertility patients needing donors.

The same argument could be made about sperm donation, yet Ms. Barto has remained curiously quiet about compensation paid to an egg donor’s male counterpart. Sincere bioethic concerns on the part of Ms. Barto or misogyny mixed with a heaping dose of discrimination? I’m guessing it is the latter.

For more information on how you can oppose this legislation as well as reading a devastating emasculation of Ms. Barto’s bill, I commend you to Marna Gatlin’s opinion piece on the American Fertility Association’s blog.