Police in Georgia and Thailand are currently investigating claims of a scheme involving the trafficking of women to harvest their eggs.
Three Thai women recently came forward with the allegations after returning to Thailand from Georgia. One of the women claims that she initially responded to an ad for surrogate mothers who would live with families and be paid 25,000 baht(about $ 1,182) a month.
The victims, who were interviewed with their identities kept hidden, state they were then transported to the country of Georgia, where they were housed with other women and told that the mentioned ad was a lie.
Once there, the women were force-administered with hormones to stimulate their ovaries before anesthetizing them once a month and removing their eggs to sell on the black market for in-vitro fertilization, allegedly. The women were reportedly told they needed to pay 70,000 baht (around $ 2,000) for their freedom and had their passports taken.
[The women] 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.
— One of the three rescued women
The women were only rescued after faking sick to avoid having their eggs harvested. A former victim who bought her freedom contacted the The Pavena Foundation for Children and Women that helped to organize the women’s escape, as well as push for a further investigation.
It is believed at least 100 women remain enslaved, with the hopes that the investigation will result in more being freed.
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