CGiven how long the cost of living has been a crisis, it has taken a while for the price of a coveted commodity to change: that of domestically produced human eggs. After being set at £750 for 13 years, the compensation limit for women who donate their eggs is finally set to rise to £986 in England, Northern Ireland and Wales.

Not that this amount should be considered a payment, fee or gratuity. The BBC reported on the increase and went out of its way to remind women that the financial compensation is an incentive to be nice and nothing else: “Egg donors have been warned not to do it for the £986 in cash.”

Perhaps that is why the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) did not round the amount up to £990: the rip-off of four pounds would probably have attracted a more calculating woman who, just before her laboriously cultivated eggs were removed under anaesthetic, would ask herself why the total compensation for this strenuous but unnecessary service was not enough to buy a decent iPhone.

The revised but relatively modest amount serves as a test of women’s altruism, and their collective altruism as a guarantee of the purity of the fertility industry. While more squeamish countries have banned egg donation, as in the case of commercial surrogacy, and others, such as the US, advocate a fertility wilderness for all, the UK has agreed to a compromise: if young women can be persuaded to donate eggs or carry fetuses for a fee or less, the whole sector is freed from its commercialisation. No woman has been forced into the reproductive market out of financial need. On the other hand, it could be argued that they have not been paid fairly either.

In return for a commercial clinic offering IVF (from an “altruistic egg donor”) for a minimum of £12,000, a British donor undergoes the screening and invasive procedures that would set a US student back $10,000 for a £986 fee. Admittedly, though, that is more generous than Scotland’s recently announced offer to essentially grant state recognition to women who “give the joy of starting a family”. Across the UK, egg donors (though let’s not forget the services of sperm donors) seem to be the only people in this thriving sector who are expected never to tarnish the miracle of IVF with a line-item bill.

Much of the credit for this system goes to the HFEA, whose procurement-friendly website (which describes egg donation as an “astonishingly selfless act”) never lets prospective donors suspect that the long-term health risks are still considered insufficiently researched by a significant number of academics, nor that many familiar with the screenings, tests, daily injections, scans, bloating and discomfort of ovarian stimulation and egg retrieval would not dream of asking a young woman – possibly as young as 18 – to do this for unknown recipients.

Nor is the BBC and Scottish Parliament’s joyful coverage of egg donation countered by accounts of women describing hospital stays, trauma or regret after donating human tissue.

One egg donor who was “really ill due to excessive bleeding” discussed the increased compensation on Mumsnet last week, writing: “This is absolutely not something I would do again and I would never have done it unless someone incredibly important to me asked me to.”

Severe ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS) is a rare but not unknown side effect; around a third of all women suffer from mild OHSS, according to the HFEA, “which can usually be effectively treated at home with painkillers”. A statement that might be more reassuring if doctors did not have a habit of trivialising women’s pain, as is increasingly becoming apparent.

The sadness that comes when, as sometimes happens, a woman who has donated eggs is later unable to become pregnant is perhaps even more difficult to control, but this is not addressed on the HFEA website.

Added to these unknowns is the fact that UK egg donors must agree that any resulting children (from a maximum of 10 families) can contact them when they turn 18. Given all this, while the HFEA is right to describe egg donation as an astonishingly selfless act, perhaps it should ask itself why a booming industry worth over £470 million should be no less formally dependent on women’s boundless selflessness and self-flagellation than a strict religious enterprise. Around one in six IVF procedures today use donated gametes.

If it is unfair to ask whether there is any man who would so painfully surrender his body to the reproductive interests of an unknown person, then it is difficult to imagine any other part of the British economy that depends so crucially on the goodness of women. Or, given current expectations, even on the goodness of women than usual.

While the comparison with voluntary blood and organ donors is a good example of the generosity of egg donors, it is inaccurate: the recipients’ lives are not at risk; the donated eggs are produced to order; the egg donors are asked to take risks that benefit profit-seeking recruiters. “Donating,” one leading clinic tells prospective women, “is the most valuable gift you can give.” For parents, the package of eight fresh eggs costs £13,245.

Even when women are paid to provide eggs, the lack of long-term research raises doubts about the possibility of informed consent. Of course, in an industry that requires impoverished women to carry, deliver and then abandon babies on behalf of some of the world’s most demanding parents, one expects a certain level of indifference toward those who are, in short, demarcated as egg production sites.

But research suggests that some women are encouraged by egg suppliers to forget about potential long-term complications, and the industry has little interest in finding out whether or not they exist. It’s not often that the British Hen Welfare Trust is approached, but its charitable commitment to egg producers’ interests could certainly enlighten the HFEA.