A horrifying story of human trafficking has emerged from formerly Soviet Georgia where at least hundred women are reported to have been kept against their will as slaves treated no better than as animals at a human egg farm.
The operation, which exists solely for the purpose of human egg harvesting, is reportedly run by Chinese gangsters who lured women to the eastern European country with the promise of lucrative salaries for serving as IVF surrogates. Instead, the women were held against their wills, pumped full of hormones to stimulate their ovaries, and anaesthetized once a month in order to facilitate the removal of their eggs.
They soon realized that they had been lied to. There were no loving couples seeking to have children via surrogacy; rather, their eggs were to be harvested by the illegal trafficking ring and sold on the black market.
The story came to light after three women from Thailand were rescued following the payment of what amounted to a ransom.
“The effort to free them was prompted by Pavena Hongsakula, founder of the Pavena Foundation for Children and Women,” reported the Bangkok Post. “Ms. Pavena said she learned about it from another woman victim who had been released and returned to Thailand in September only after paying the gang about 70,000 baht,” about $2,000 US.
The victim told Ms Pavena that she and ten others had travelled to Georgia in August and were held in four large houses.
The Pavena Foundation worked with Interpol to free the three Thai women. They were released on January 30 after the organization ransomed them, according to the Bangkok Post.
According to a Reuters report, one of the victims told a press conference that they had been taken to a house where there were 60 to 70 other Thai women.
Most other reports indicate that at least 100 Thai women were captives at the dystopian “farm.”
The captive women, this rescued victim explained, “would be injected to get treatment, anesthetized, and their eggs would be extracted with a machine. After we got this information, and it was not the same as the advertisement, we got scared. We tried to contact people back home.”
Surrogacy Concern (SC), a British organization founded to expose the harms of surrogacy and egg harvesting, called the plight of the enslaved Thai women “appalling.”
“The explosion of surrogacy and egg donation is increasing demand,” said SC, responding to the story on X. “A growing entitlement to women’s eggs and wombs is leading us to the same place as we see with vulnerable women trafficked into prostitution.”
“We need a global ban on the international trade in eggs and children: neither should be crossing borders,” declared SC. “We object to both surrogacy and egg ‘donation’ in equal measure. We need an international conversation on both.”
A growing entitlement to women's eggs and wombs is leading us to the same place as we see with vulnerable women trafficked in to prostitution.
— SurrogacyConcern (@SurrogConcern) February 7, 2025
We need a global ban on the international trade in eggs and children: neither should be crossing borders.
“A reminder: Georgia allows commercial surrogacy – many British people travel there to undertake surrogacy. How do they know eggs bought in Georgia haven’t been farmed from women in such circumstances?” asked SC. “Demand for eggs from women of East Asian heritage is huge.”
Surrogacy Concern asserted that human trafficking and egg harvesting are “the tip of a very serious global iceberg.”
“In stealing these women’s eggs, they have stolen their future children. This is a devastating indictment of 21st century life,” SC declared.
Katy Faust, founder and president of Them Before Us, a global non-profit defending children’s right to their mother and father, summed up the story in one word: “HORRIFYING” adding, “And entirely predictable.”
HORRIFYING.
— Katy Faust (@Advo_Katy) February 8, 2025
And entirely predictable. https://t.co/l7ISJKQ60s
It remains unclear how many women are still being held at the “human farm,” according to a report by the Daily Mail. The British newspaper reported also that “Thai authorities and Interpol have launched an investigation, with police in Thailand saying that there could be other rescues as the case progresses.”