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movement of people across the European Union makes it difficult to crack down on the trade in eggs, all the more so since the demographic changes over the past few decades mean that some countries have a shortage of eggs and others have a youthful supply. Jacques Testart, the research director at INSERM, a medical institute in Paris, was not particularly surprised by the stories coming out of Romania and Cyprus. ‘There are rumours circulating about trafficking in Europe, although they are difficult to prove,’ he told the news agency AFP. ‘There will always be a need for the “hens” and there will always be women who do that to earn a bit of money… especially in the current economic crisis.’ One gynaecologist, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity, claimed that egg trafficking is common in Cyprus. ‘Everyone knows that, but we don’t do anything [about it],’ the doctor alleged.

Eric Blyth, a professor in the Department of Human and Health Sciences at the University of Huddersfield, has identified three key characteristics of the countries that have become popular destinations for fertility tourism: ‘First, the lack of regulation affording adequate protection for the parties most directly affected, i.e., donors, surrogates, patients, and children; second, the operation of a commercial market in human gametes – especially eggs – and women’s gestational services; and third, a level of secrecy that helps to conceal unprofessional, unethical, and illegal practices.’ Because of these issues, the UK’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has called the use of foreign egg donors a ‘profoundly exploitative and unethical trade’.

There have also been shenanigans involving sperm acquired by ill-gotten means. In the past decade, a number of internet businesses have cropped up that claim to be able to put people desperate to become parents in touch with potential sperm or egg donors, or to supply donations directly, serving as a middle man. The online services may appear to be an easier, cheaper, and less bureaucratic option than going through a government-licensed clinic; they also rarely advertise, say, the sperm shortages that characterize the market, which makes them seem more likely to deliver the goods. But such sites may pose a risk to people trying to find help. In fact, since April 2007, it has been unlawful to ‘procure, test or distribute’ human eggs or sperm for human reproductive use in the UK without a licence from the British government authority that regulates fertility work. Regulated clinics in both the UK and the US are required to freeze and store sperm for six months before it is used by a woman, during which time the clinics test it for HIV and other diseases, but internet traders selling ‘fresh sperm’ had not been required to do such checks. The law, called the Human Fertilization and Embryology Act, was brought in to regulate the use of fresh sperm, with a view to ensuring it is safe. In addition, via the internet there is generally no way to confirm that the donor is who he says he is, and, as a result, the safeguards that UK and European law offers to parents and any resulting children may not apply. And given the internet’s ability to cross borders, there is little that can be done to force a site based in another country to follow local law – an issue made even thornier in the US, where state laws may vary considerably.

In 2009, the UK saw the first prosecution of an internet sperm trader under the new law. The case involved a website called Fertility First, through which fertility patients could select from a database of anonymous sperm donors and order ‘fresh sperm’ to be delivered, for a fee, direct to their front door. A customer, Melissa Bhalla-Pentley, paid £530 to receive this convenient sperm supply, a price tag that allegedly included reimbursement of the sperm donor’s expenses as well as a site membership fee, a courier charge, and a per-cycle cost for the sperm itself. When she failed to get pregnant, she arranged for another donation – an extra £300 charge. She had requested the donor’s medical records, but when they arrived she noticed that his name was visible, ‘just lined through with a black marker’. Something seemed amiss. At the very least, the company had breached protocols of donor privacy. When her request for a refund was refused, Bhalla-Pentley went to the police with her complaint.

When the case came to court in 2010, it emerged that the entrepreneurs behind Fertility First had earned up to £250,000 from about eight hundred customers. Two men were found guilty of procuring and distributing sperm without a licence, as required by UK law. The sperm donors were reported to have received no payment at all for their services, nor had they realized, by their account, that Fertility First was unregulated. In the Daily Mail, reporter Laura Topham related how the enterprise had been hatched after the men overheard a childless woman in a pub talking about her desire to get pregnant – ‘she wanted sperm delivered like milk in the morning’.

This is what reproduction looks like when capitalism’s invisible hand has a free rein. Where there is demand, a supply will be found.

In order to give birth, a woman first needs eggs, and then needs sperm. That’s how reproduction works today. If she doesn’t have good quality eggs of her own, and has no access to safe sperm, there are currently few channels through which she can acquire either, outside of the donor market. But doctors are developing ways to bypass the market – including a treatment that is already being used successfully.

Eggs develop in ovaries, of course, but what is contained in the ovaries are not strictly eggs but immature ‘follicles’, clumps of cells that contain a single oocyte that grows and