Who is Nepal’s egg donation ban actually protecting?

KATHMANDU – When Padma was 22, she was diagnosed with cancer. What followed were three brutal cycles of chemotherapy—each necessary, each taking something from her. Doctors warned that the radiation would damage her ovaries. But Padma was fighting to stay alive. Freezing her eggs felt like a problem for another time, one she hoped she would have.

She survived. Her ovaries did not.

Now 27, Padma—whose name has been changed to protect her privacy—needs a donor egg to conceive. Under normal circumstances, that option would have been available in Nepal. But last August, Nepal’s Supreme Court issued an interim order banning the extraction and storage of women’s eggs entirely, directing the government to form regulations before any clinic could resume the services. The order came after Hope Fertility and Diagnostic Pvt Ltd in Babarmahal was found to have been illegally extracting eggs from teenage girls and selling them commercially. The court’s intent was protection. But for women like Padma, the protection arrived too late, and the wait for what comes next has no clear end.

‘‘I did everything right,’’ she...