New England Journal discusses the issues associated with egg donation in light of the lovely situation with recruiting egg donors in Korea. AMBI’s own Bonnie Steinbock has the right answer:
Some bioethicists argue that egg donors should be compensated on the basis of the time and discomfort associated with the process, not the number and quality of the eggs that are produced. According to Bonnie Steinbock, a professor of philosophy at the State University of New York at Albany who has studied egg donation, in the absence of a consensus that no egg donor should be compensated, payment for donations for research is ethically acceptable.5 In an interview, Steinbock explained: “Any time that we ask people to do things that impose significant burdens and some degree of risk, fairness may require that they be adequately compensated. At the same time, there’s a general consensus that it would be improper to offer enormous sums of money to egg donors that could sway their judgment.”