California Controversy: Let's Not Expand the Market in Women's Eggs

Last month, California Governor Jerry Brown vetoed a bill that would have allowed researchers to pay women for having their eggs harvested and retrieved. His move was warmly welcomed by women's health and public interest groups including Our Bodies Ourselves, National Women's Health Network, Pro-Choice Alliance for Responsible Research, Alliance for Humane Biotechnology and Center for Genetics and Society. (Disclosure: see author affiliations.)

Echoing the longstanding concerns of many progressives about the serious risks of egg retrieval, Governor Brown's brief but eloquent veto message recognized that "in medical procedures of this kind, genuinely informed consent is difficult because the long term risks are not adequately known." He also acknowledged that low-income women would face disproportionate temptations to discount the risks. "Putting thousands of dollars on the table only compounds the problem," Brown wrote.

The vetoed bill, AB 926, was sponsored by the fertility industry's trade organization, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. It was supported by several mainstream women's organizations, and breezed through the Democratic-dominated legislature. Ironically, as Governor Brown noted, the law that this bill would have overturned...