If you're a woman who has ever been tempted by magazine advertisements or other solicitations offering high prices for your eggs, you're not alone. Each year, a growing number of women choose to donate their eggs for medical research or so that couples struggling with infertility can enjoy the opportunity to carry and bear a child. However, this area of reproductive technology can sometimes be rife with legal and ethical dilemmas. Read on to learn more about how egg donation occurs, as well as what may happen if you change your mind about how your eggs are used.

What will you need to do to become an egg donor?

Although sperm donation has been around for decades, egg donation is fairly recent -- and as with many areas of medicine, the laws and ethical issues surrounding egg donation are still catching up with the technological capabilities.

To donate eggs, you'll usually be required to undergo an extensive physical and psychological screening process. The physical screening is intended to ensure that you are healthy enough for the barrage of hormones necessary to ready your eggs for transplantation. In addition, the better your physical health, the higher prices your eggs will command. In many cases, women are able to sell their eggs for up to $10,000.

The psychological screening is meant, in part, to ensure that you are capable of handling the emotional challenges inherent in donating your own biological material to create a child who will be raised by others, or to be used in medical research. For this reason, most egg donors who pass the psychological screening are amenable to and fully informed of the process and don't later attempt to rescind permission to use their eggs. However, there have been a few publicized incidents in which an egg donor later decides that she does not want her eggs to be used.

What happens if you decide to donate eggs but later change your mind?

Unlike sperm donation, in which men are paid for their sample and sent on their way, the egg donation process is more invasive and bears more similarities to the adoption process. When you apply to become an egg donor and complete your evaluation screenings, the donation company will create an individualized profile for you, which will be made available to couples who wish to purchase eggs.

Once you've been matched with a couple, you'll begin the egg preparation and retrieval process. In most cases, the couple who wishes to purchase your eggs will pay any associated medical expenses, as well as a separate cash payment -- in other cases, these costs are paid by the donation facility (which then seeks reimbursement and overhead expenses from the purchasing couple).

At any time before retrieval, you are able to change your mind and rescind your agreement to provide eggs, with little penalty. You may be responsible for some of the costs that have been covered by the purchasing couple or the treatment facility, but you are unlikely to carry any additional liability. 

However, after retrieval, you may have a more difficult time in preventing your eggs from being used. Before the retrieval, you'll be asked to sign a legal waiver and release form giving up your right to the eggs, including the right to determine when and how they are used, or whether embryos created from your eggs may be destroyed.

The only way to stop the use of your eggs after they've been removed from your body and you've signed this waiver is to file a motion for injunction in your local trial court with the help of legal services. However, unless you can demonstrate that you were not fully informed of the consequences of the egg donation, or that your permission to use your eggs was given under duress, it's unlikely that a court will grant this injunction. For this reason, it's very important to consider this decision carefully, and be fully committed to the process and any potential outcomes by the time you schedule your egg retrieval.