Women Sells Eggs For Big Payoff

The Boston Globe reports:

Boston, a city crawling with young women saddled with high rent and credit-card and college debt, is fertile territory.

Look under the category "Business Opportunities" in the May 5 edition of Harvard University's student newspaper The Crimson: "A warm, loving Jewish couple wants your help to achieve our dream of becoming a family. . . . Compensation $8,000+." Check out a listing posted on boston.craig-slist.org in late May by California-based broker Alternative Conceptions: "Fulfill some of your own aspirations by earning $6,500 and higher for your time and effort while helping others create a family."

But "loving" and "helping" are not the whole equation. "I wouldn't do it to help out a woman I never met without being paid," says Geri, a Yale University graduate school alumna in environmental management and international relations with brown eyes and wavy brown hair who spoke to me on the condition that only her first name would be used. A week before her graduation two years ago, she was paid $7,500 for a donation cycle that yielded eight eggs at the Yale Fertility Center. "I used it toward credit cards and loans," she says. Geri, 30, works as a market research analyst in Minneapolis but is looking for a new job, possibly in the Boston area. Once she settles somewhere, she says, she'll likely look into donating again to pay off another steep bill and her remaining loans. "I'm not embarrassed to say that," she says.

The supply and demand for eggs.If there wasn't massive government intervention in the college tuition market we wonder if this would be going on.