Anna Molas: "Egg donors are sustaining a large industry with their work"

BarcelonaShe studied journalism but soon continued with anthropology studies that have taken her to Australia, where she obtained her doctorate, and where she lives and works. Anna Molas (Barcelona, 1991) has turned her doctoral thesis on egg donation in Spain into a book, Taming Egg Donors: The Egg Donation Reproductive Market in Spain (Palgrave, 2025), which raises many questions and calls for rethinking one of the most frequent assisted reproduction techniques. The first time she encountered egg donation was more than ten years ago when an ad to be an egg donor appeared on a job search portal. "On the one hand, I got angry – I was looking for a job, why was this coming to me? – and, on the other hand, it also generated many questions for me. That lit the fuse".

Why is the assisted reproduction industry in Spain a hub of attraction for couples from all over Europe?

— There are several factors, and one, clearly, has to do with the legislation we have, which is one of the most permissive in the European framework and which, for example, places no limitations regarding age [in the private system] or civil status. And another very central issue is that Spain right now is one of the few countries that still maintains anonymity. And this is important because it is what allows donors to understand egg donation as a decision that will have no consequences.

And Spain is a leader in treatments using donor eggs.

— The data show us that more than half of the people who come from abroad what they come looking for in Spain are treatments with donated eggs, which is precisely where they have the most limitations in their own countries.

It is what is called reproductive tourism.

— Exactly, because there are countries where egg donation is directly prohibited. In others, it is not, but since no financial compensation is offered or it is not anonymous, they have very few donors. Therefore, waiting lists are eternal, and it is easier here.

And who are the donors? You have done fieldwork and interviewed some of them.

— What I found were people who had made the donation when they were quite young, 22 years old or younger. And, then, what I found is that their decision to donate had to do with a complicated and unstable job market. This doesn't mean they didn't also like the idea of helping someone, but that wasn't the driver for most of them. There were those who directly defined the donation as just another job they could do:"I'm a seasonal waitress in the summer and this is also part of the same thing".

As an easy way to get money at a given time.

— Yes, although it is not easy, even if the narrative is constructed like this. Others did not necessarily frame it as work, they did not call it that, but the objective was related to it. One told me that she had been looking for a job for a long time and wanted to start university but her parents could not support her and with egg donation she had a little cushion to continue looking for a job. Or another who wanted to pay for unpaid internships in Argentina with this money. They are around 1,000 or 1,200 euros which can increase as they donate. And there are also incentives if they bring friends.

There is a tension between a supposedly altruistic donation and this economic compensation.

— It is spoken of as if it were an altruistic donation, but in practice, this money does represent an incentive for some women. But this altruistic narrative also has a gender bias. The moral weight falls on them. Why is it assumed that this donation should be altruistic? And the clinics, do they do it altruistically? All the other actors are making money. In my interviews, this dichotomy was very evident. Some even felt a little ashamed to admit that they were doing it for the money. In the end, what these women are doing is reproductive work that is sustaining a large industry. And this narrative of altruism makes women volunteers and not workers, and therefore, as volunteers, they cannot negotiate conditions.

In addition to genetic tests, donors are also evaluated, explained, for their behavior.

— Yes, the donation process requires a lot of involvement from the donor: she will have to inject medication daily for two weeks or more, she will have to go for different check-ups, she will have to endure the physical changes that occur and she will have to go through surgery. And the clinics also look at how much that person can be trusted and if they will be able to follow the treatment correctly. And for this reason, they do a lot of follow-up via WhatsApp to ask if they have taken medication, at what time... And the financial compensation is not guaranteed until the end.

Is there an ambivalent relationship between clinics and donors?

— It is a relationship of control but also of care and with an economic background. They depend heavily on donors. They dedicate a lot of effort to donor management because right now there is a lot of competition. But at the same time, it is an uncomfortable presence.

Is there a class inequality between women who donate and those who receive eggs? You explain that 24.8% of egg donors were born abroad.

— There is a class gap that is also very related to age. We are talking about 20-year-old girls versus women between 40 and 45 years old or more. This age factor alone will have a lot to do with their economic capacity or what stage of life they are in. And there is also a large number of donors who are immigrants. Here, for example, clinics highly value foreign donors from Eastern European countries because they bring a phenotype that they find difficult to find among the Spanish population. They like to have a pool of everything.

Under what conditions do they donate? What are the risks? Do donors have enough information about the entire process?

— The clinic is the sole mediator of information, and this, in part, is thanks to anonymity. When recipients ask who the donors are, it is the clinics that respond, and they do not usually say many of the things we are talking about now. What clinics know and communicate to donors, because it is in the informed consent, are the short-term risks. But there are few studies on long-term risks and informed consent does not mention them. And another thing that donors do not know is how the global reproductive market works: they do not know what will happen to their eggs, but they also do not know the economic value they will have once they are outside their bodies. If they knew, perhaps they would claim a bigger slice of the pie.

Children born from assisted reproduction techniques have begun to raise their voices and claim the right to know their origins and for donation to cease being anonymous. What do you think, should it cease to be anonymous?

— Yes, I think right now it is what would benefit more parties involved in the process. In a way, they had sold us a story, which was that genetics doesn't matter, and it turns out there are people who say: "Listen, I don't agree. I already know who my parents are, but I still want to know where I come from". And this forces us to rethink rights, to rethink what it means to know your biological origins, if you can decide for another... It cannot be denied that these people should have the right to choose how important genetics is to them. Furthermore, anonymity is obscuring many parts of the process.

If the donation ceases to be anonymous, the number of donors may fall.

— It may be that for some women it is no longer an option and that we may have, as happens in other countries, waiting lists. I think the question is how we want to do it. Does being able to achieve all these pregnancies justify everything that is at stake right now, or do we prefer to take a step back and rethink it? Do we want to create different relationships with the donors? Do we want to create different relationships with our children? I also believe it is a way of defending the family in a more solid way that does not involve genetics. Because when you prohibit access to this information, the message you give is that this information is so important that I hide it from you because it could turn everything upside down. On the other hand, this transparent approach is the opposite message: that this does not have to destabilize my family.

But it also puts a brake on a booming business.

— Evidently, anonymity is one of the pillars that have allowed Spain to have the business it has. And the annulment of anonymity clearly puts it in danger. It is also important to note that right now the majority of fertility clinics have been bought by large investment funds. We are talking about an economy that is not local, it is transnational.

What surprised you the most?

— What impacted me the most is the work that this donation implies both physically and emotionally, and that this work is very invisible. It has not been described what this process implies, we do not know what concrete situations it generates in the lives of these people who, as we said, are sustaining the entire industry, and it is something that I think we should know.