Today, Family Research Council Action and the Oklahoma Family Policy Council released a radio advertisement supporting State Representative Rebecca Hamilton's Oklahoma House Bill 3077, currently being reviewed by the Oklahoma State Senate. H.B. 3077 would put an end to the financial lure that draws young women into donating their eggs to fertility clinics, a dangerous procedure that can cause life-threatening complications including kidney failure and blood clots.
Dr. David Prentice, senior fellow for the Center for Human Life and Bioethics at the Family Research Council, said of the bill:
"Fertility brokers are literally trafficking in human body parts and risking the health of the young women they harvest the eggs from in the process. Numerous scientific references, going back over 15 years, warn that up to 15-20 percent of women can experience severe problems, including shock, potential future infertility and even death. While fertility brokers like to compare egg donation to sperm or blood donation, for which men can receive cash payments, the risks involved with egg donation make it much more comparable to bone marrow donation, for which payment is illegal. This bill would make egg donation more accurately treated like organ donation, while in vitro fertilization would still be allowed. Women could still donate their eggs if they believed in the cause. But the health risks are too great to allow brokers to use cash as bait for young women."