tics. Matching donors is now left entirely to the doctor’s discretion.
Clinics are allowed to describe broad details about their donor base,
and they do recruit heavily among students in order to assure cus-
tomers that they have eggs with university pedigree. But a much
more reliable source of egg donations—especially with unemploy-
ment soaring past 20%—has been Spain’s population of South
American immigrants, many of them illegals with few ways to earn
money. That’s fine with most buyers, says Olivia Montuschi, co-
founder of Britain’s Donor Conception Network, which works with
families who have conceived via donated genetic material. (Montus-
chi’s son and daughter were conceived with donor sperm after her
husband was found to be infertile.) “The vast majority of women
don’t care where the eggs actually come from. They are so down the
line with unsuccessful fertility treatment at that point that they will
go anywhere and do anything.”
Nicole Rodriguez, a Chilean immigrant, says she sold her eggs to
another clinic shortly after arriving in Spain. “We weren’t wet-
backs—we were students of the visual arts—but I didn’t have permis-
sion to work yet,” she says. “It seemed like easy money.” She knew
what the clinics wanted: “My skin is a little bit dark, but it was for-
tunate for me that it was winter and my skin was paler. When I arrived
at the clinic, they asked me what my skin color was. I had put on a
lot of makeup, so they said my skin was white.”
She laughs while recounting her first conversation with a clinic
recruiter: “I had asked, ‘How much do you pay for eggs?’ The
woman corrected me, saying, ‘ You mean for the donation of eggs.’
I said, ‘Excuse me, excuse me—the donation of eggs.’ ” During har-
vesting, she chose to go under general anesthesia. When she woke
up, an envelope of cash was lying next to her. “It was like they had
thrown cash on a bed stand after seeing a prostitute,” she says. The
payment of $1,400 was enough for her to live on for three months.
Photograph by J CARRIER
The technology is at a point now,” says David T Sher, founder
and CEO of the Switzerland-based fertility-services company Elite
IVF, “where if you provide the sperm, we can basically FedEx you a
baby.” Most parents, of course, would not see the transaction in such
coldly efficient terms. To them, the upside of this poorly regulated
marketplace is still nothing short of miraculous.
Lavi Aron and Omer Shatzky are t wo gay men living in Tel Aviv. In
February 2008, in order to have their marriage recognized in Israel,
they wed in Toronto. But the dream of having children seemed impossible. “As a gay couple, it is nearly impossible to adopt here,” says Aron.
“The only real option was to hire a surrogate, but oh, the cost.” Friends
in similar situations had found that the price of surrogacy and egg
donation could easily exceed $300,000, with years of legal wrangling.
But Elite IVF made it comparatively easy, given that the couple
was willing to take the procedure global. In the same way that Orbitz
searches multiple airlines for the best deals and cobbles together a
trip for a lower price, Sher found a Caucasian egg donor living in
Mexico City who was willing to give up her eggs. But Mexico does
not have extensive laws to protect the rights of intended parents. So
Sher flew a surrogate mother business class from the U.S. to Mexico
to have the eggs implanted—one with sperm from Aron, the other
with sperm from Shatzky. The brother and sister were born in California last November as American citizens.
“It was like winning the lottery for us,” says Aron. “Genetically, one
belongs to him and one belongs to me. But they’re also siblings because they come from the same egg donor. We could not have a better
family than this. Everyone is connected to each other.” Within weeks,
