Markets, Morals, and Limits in the Exchange of Human Eggs
Students of markets from all disciplines are increasingly turning their attention to the cultural and psychological factors that affect market structure. In traditionally taboo markets, of which reproduction surely is one, those factors include cultural understandings of the moral limits of markets and our collective level of comfort with fully commodifying and subjecting traditionally sacred items and activities to the marketplace.
While it is easy to dismiss these cultural understandings as romantic, silly, or delusional, this severely underestimates their importance, not just to society, but to the market itself. By reframing traditionally unacceptable behavior as a more palatable and familiar transaction, society is able to accept a market that is otherwise socially problematic or even repulsive. Market architects ignore these cultural understandings -- and, in particular, societal conceptions of the ethical limits of markets -- at their peril. In a world unwilling to embrace the sale of female reproductive capacity for merely a price, the "priceless gift" of egg donation allows a market to flourish that otherwise might stagnate under the weight of social disapproval.