Eggs-ploiting women: a critical feminist analysis of the different principles in transplant and fertility tourism

Intergovernmental agencies have recognized that inconsistencies in the way that nation states regulate commerce in human kidneys lubricate transplant tourism, and have repeatedly exhorted recalcitrant governments of both organ-importing and organ-exporting nations to criminalize the exchange of cash for kidneys. Yet these same organizations have elected to remain silent on inconsistencies in the regulation of the trade in human eggs that lubricate fertility tourism. This article is a critical feminist analysis of this paradox. Sketches of the histories of regulation of the global markets in human kidneys and human eggs allow attribution of the different approaches to sales of kidneys and eggs to the triumph of neo-liberalism in the 1990s. Neo-liberalism supports the growth of the medical tourism industry and its niche market catering for infertility, and is responsible for exacerbating the relative disadvantage of poor and powerless women in destination countries, thereby creating the conditions for ‘bioavailability’, that is, the willingness to exchange body parts for cash. The paper identifies a disturbing correlation between deeply engrained conservative attitudes to women and a plentiful supply of eggs, and concludes by suggesting that what women need to lift themselves out of poverty and discrimination is secure and dignified work.Intergovernmental agencies have recognized that inconsistencies in the way that nation states regulate commerce in human kidneys lubricate transplant tourism, and have repeatedly exhorted recalcitrant governments of both organ-importing and organ-exporting nations to criminalize the exchange of cash for kidneys. Yet these same organizations have elected to remain silent on inconsistencies in the regulation of the trade in human eggs that lubricate fertility tourism. This article is a critical feminist analysis of this paradox. Sketches of the histories of regulation of the global markets in human kidneys and human eggs allow attribution of the different approaches to sales of kidneys and eggs to the triumph of neo-liberalism in the 1990s. Neo-liberalism supports the growth of the medical tourism industry and its niche market catering for infertility, and is responsible for exacerbating the relative disadvantage of poor and powerless women in destination countries, thereby creating the conditions for ‘bioavailability’, that is, the willingness to exchange body parts for cash. The paper identifies a disturbing correlation between deeply engrained conservative attitudes to women and a plentiful supply of eggs, and concludes by suggesting that what women need to lift themselves out of poverty and discrimination is secure and dignified work.