Hello once again infertility fighters yesterday we posted some information about a new discovery regarding male infertility and what may be one of the causes. It felt good to shine some light on the male reproductive process and some of the challenges that are facing infertile men. It’s not often that we find new information new discoveries for the advancement of male fertility. With that said we decided to jump back over to the female side again only today we chose to write about a legal matter that hit the news just a couple of weeks ago.

There was an anti-trust class action lawsuit that was filed in San Francisco, CA back on April 14th against three organizations. The three defendants listed on the class action suit are the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, Pacific Fertility Center and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. The main sticking point of the complaint is the pay out cap that has been placed on potential egg donors. The guidelines set by the American Society of Reproductive Medicine states that it would be wrong to payout more that $10k to any potential egg donor. It’s interesting to note that the ASRM represent approximately 85% of the assisted reproduction clinics in the US. Kind of sounds like they have a type of monopoly on their hands and they are the only one’s setting the bar with little to no competition.

The argument for this lawsuit is that based on an hourly wage earning scale the women are getting paid much less than the men. Plus the egg donor process is much more complicated with quite a few side effects. Where as sperm donation….. let’s be honest here is enjoyable and involves no invasive procedure what so ever and can be done as much as the guy wants to participate. Not the case for the women who are considering egg donation. Let’s take a brief look at what has to happen for the assisted reproduction centers to get their egg donations.

The potential donor must go through psychological and medical exams then three weeks of hormone injections to stimulate egg growth and also puts the donor on a wild emotional rollercoaster. During that three-week period they have to go through numerous blood tests and ultrasounds for monitoring. Then after the 3 weeks they have to endure a surgical procedure to retrieve the eggs  that may take a few days to fully recover from. So you tell me which one of these sounds more taxing on the donor? A few moments with a cup a couple of times a week to get millions of sperm or the month-long process to get a few eggs?

One other interesting thing that we noticed about this lawsuit is the fact that other than two states in the country, Louisiana and Indiana no other state government or the Federal government for that matter actually regulate sperm or egg donation compensation. Which I suppose is OK to let the free market dictate the price but when the market is being driven by a small handful of organizations as it is in this case. Then I have a small issue with that. What do you all think about compensation scale being different for men and women for sperm vs egg donations? Have your say in the comments section down below and if you want to read more about the class action lawsuit wanting more money for egg donors then you will need to click on that link we just shared with you.

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D & L