From Womb to Wallet: Recognizing the Placenta’s Lawful Role in the U.S. Marketplace

Modern biotechnology has transformed the human placenta from medical waste into a lucrative commercial resource. Placental tissue is used across industries—from cosmetics touting antiaging effects to pharmaceuticals employing it as a raw material for wound therapies. Yet while hospitals and biotechnology companies profit from this growing placenta economy, the women from whom the placentas originate receive neither compensation nor complete information. Federal law provides little guidance, and most states lack explicit regulations, producing a legal vacuum that allows stakeholders to exploit ambiguity. For-profit companies routinely frame their placenta procurement as altruistic donation rather than commercial exchange, citing the federal law to justify nonpayment. Although placentas function as temporary organs inside the womb, this Note contends that the placenta’s characteristics align it more closely with other lawful markets in biological materials such as plasma and gametes than with organs that federal law forbids from sale or compensated transfer. Unlike those vital organs, placentas are naturally and necessarily expelled from the body during childbirth. Because the law already permits compensation for analogous body products such as plasma and gametes, placentas should receive equivalent treatment as legitimate objects of market exchange for which donors may lawfully receive compensation. To remedy this inequitable framework, this Note proposes amending the National Organ Transplant Act to expressly exclude placentas from its scope. Such a reform would align federal law with the realities of the modern bioeconomy and affirm women’s rightful stake in the economic value of the materials their bodies produce—formalizing the placenta’s legal and economic transformation from afterbirth to asset.