Caste factor stymies female egg donors

Kasturibai’s parents hail from a tribal community in Utnoor, Adilabad District. They are very poor and she wanted to earn, to give her parents a decent living.

When some actors came there for shooting, her innocent beautiful eyes drew attention and they offered her a role as a model. She was modelling for small advertising firms, but somehow did not make it into the big league. She quit her career in modelling and now earns a handsome salary. She is busy as an egg donor in Mumbai.

Initially she was hesitant but she later compromised. The money proved too much to resist- she made between Rs 1 lakh-1.5 lakh, for her first donation in 2010.

"I didn’t want to be a prostitute. So there was really no other choice at that time, for all I wanted to give was comforts to my parents,” said Kasturibai.

After the first donation, her name was entered into a database. Now egg agents call her constantly.

“I’m a hot commodity because I receive a good response and am in demand because of the colour of my eyes,” she said. The most popular choice for young unsuccessful actresses and models these days is becoming an egg donor. Egg agents are aggressively recruiting models and actresses, whose looks are coveted by couples turning to in-vitro fertilisation.

It has become a disturbing urban trend as girls and young women donate their oocytes or eggs to make quick and easy money.

“While the process of egg donation is a legal act, there are clauses and conditions that are often not followed as fertility clinics sometimes even fail to inform potential donors about the health risks involved. In most cases girls end up donating their oocytes multiple times, which results in hormonal imbalances,” says Dr Rajini, Gynaecologist. In an industry where attractiveness is a prerequisite and steady income is hard to come by, budding actresses and models often are an egg agent’s perfect target.

Those close to Kasturibai have been reluctant to give support, but she never hid what she was doing.

"Everyone said don’t tell anyone, and I said, if I’m going to give a gift, I’m not going to be ashamed. Knowing you’re giving life is what gets me through it.” she recalls.

But there was one problem which she was facing. Though her looks mattered, her religion, caste became a problem in many cases. She was from a backward tribal group.

The most baffling question to doctors at these clinics is couples wanting to know the caste of egg donors.

Even though doctors claim of not entertaining such queries and rather concentrating on "quality of egg", several couples keep nagging hospital staff till they get some clue about the caste. Dr Saurabh Kumar of Frozen Cell, said several people were curious to know the caste of the egg donors.

“Fertility clinics cannot reveal caste and identity of donors as it involves chances of parentage claims," says Dr Ajay Kumar, Member of ethics committee of World Medical Council.

The demand is not only “healthy, beautiful and fair, but also higher caste.”

The shortage of "perfect" donors has prompted fertility specialists to decry the present trend of couples' obsession with perfect kids. "Some couples are even particular about the colour of the donor's eyes or hair," said Dr Firuza at the Fertility clinic.

"They forget that assisted reproduction has a success rate of just 20%. Given such a low rate, couples should just hope to have a baby, any baby, instead of seeking a designer kid.

Life is no longer a gift of love; it is being created with care to fit specifications furnished by parents in the age of surrogacy and in-vitro fertilisation (IVF),” says award-winning writer Kishwar Desai.