No, you cannot sell your placenta in the United States in any practical sense. Federal law prohibits paying donors for human organs and tissue, and the FDA regulates every step of how placental tissue moves from a delivery room into a medical product. What you can do is keep the placenta for personal use in many states, donate it, or pay to bank your baby’s cord blood and placental tissue privately.
Why Selling Is Off the Table
The National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 makes it a crime to knowingly buy, sell, or transfer any human organ for something of value when the transaction crosses state lines. The statute defines “human organ” to include kidneys, livers, hearts, lungs, pancreases, bone marrow, corneas, eyes, bones, skin, and “any subpart thereof,” and it lets the Secretary of Health and Human Services add other tissues by regulation. Violations carry fines up to $50,000, up to five years in prison, or both.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 274e – Prohibition of Organ Purchases
The placenta is not specifically named on that list. Whether it falls under the catch-all language or has been added by regulation is a gray area that no reported court case has squarely decided. The practical effect is the same: no hospital, tissue bank, or procurement organization will pay you for a placenta, and anyone trying to set up a commercial market for raw placentas would face serious legal exposure.
The statute does carve out one exception. Payments for removal, transportation, processing, preservation, quality control, and storage of donated tissue are not treated as illegal compensation, and neither are reimbursements for travel, housing, or lost wages a donor incurs.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 274e – Prohibition of Organ Purchases That distinction is why tissue banks and biotech companies can charge for finished placental products without breaking the law. They cover processing costs and sell the medical product. The donor gets nothing.
The FDA adds a second layer of control. Placental tissue falls under the agency’s framework for human cells, tissues, and cellular and tissue-based products, or HCT/Ps.2U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Tissue and Tissue Products Any establishment that processes placental tissue for therapeutic use must register with the FDA, list each product it manufactures, and comply with detailed rules on donor screening, processing, and record-keeping.3eCFR. 21 CFR 1271.10 – HCT/P Regulation A casual sale to a buyer who then turns the tissue into a wound-care product or surgical graft is not something the regulatory system permits.
Taking Your Placenta Home
Selling is out, but keeping your placenta for personal use is allowed in a growing number of states. As of late 2024, roughly 15 states have laws or policies that clearly allow patients to take their placenta home after delivery. A handful of those have explicit statutes exempting the placenta from biohazardous waste rules and setting out release procedures. In the rest, the law is silent and the decision falls to your hospital’s internal policy.
Hospitals that release placentas typically require you to sign a liability waiver acknowledging the facility is no longer responsible for the tissue. You may need to test negative for blood-borne infections like hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and HIV. The hospital usually will not refrigerate the placenta for you but may provide a container and ice for transport. If the medical team needs the placenta for pathological testing because of a complication during delivery, your release request will be denied.
Bring this up with your OB or midwife during a prenatal visit, well before your due date. If your hospital does not have a release policy, ask whether one can be arranged. Some hospitals are more flexible than their paperwork suggests, and some are not.
A Warning About Encapsulation
Many people who ask about selling a placenta end up considering encapsulation, which involves dehydrating the placenta and grinding it into capsules. It is not federally regulated. The FDA has taken a hands-off approach, and most states provide little or no oversight. Professional services generally charge between $200 and $500.
The CDC has flagged real health risks. In a documented 2016 case, a newborn developed a serious Group B Streptococcus infection linked to the mother’s consumption of placenta capsules. Processing temperatures were not high enough to kill the bacteria. The CDC concluded that encapsulation does not reliably eliminate infectious pathogens and recommended that mothers avoid consuming placenta capsules.4Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Notes from the Field: Late-Onset Infant Group B Streptococcus Infection Associated with Maternal Consumption of Capsules Containing Dehydrated Placenta – Oregon, 2016 No processing standards exist for providers, and no scientific evidence supports the claimed benefits. If you pursue encapsulation, talk to your healthcare provider first, particularly if you tested positive for GBS during pregnancy or had any infection during delivery.
Donating Your Placenta
Donation is the main legal path for putting your placenta to medical use. It costs you nothing, and the tissue goes to research or therapeutic product development. Some tissue banks, such as Versiti, run dedicated placenta donation programs at participating hospitals. Cord blood banks that partner with delivery hospitals may collect placental tissue alongside cord blood.
Donation is not available everywhere. Your delivery hospital must participate in a donation program or partner with a procurement organization, and not every hospital does.5Health Resources & Services Administration. Donating Umbilical Cord Blood to a Public Bank If donation matters to you, start researching during your second trimester. Contact your hospital’s labor and delivery department and ask whether they work with a tissue bank or public cord blood bank.
The screening resembles what blood donors go through. You will answer questions about your medical history and your family’s health background, and you will have blood drawn to test for hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and HIV. A positive result usually makes you ineligible.5Health Resources & Services Administration. Donating Umbilical Cord Blood to a Public Bank Some programs also exclude mothers carrying multiples or those with certain pregnancy complications. Collection happens after your baby is born and does not interfere with your delivery.
The gap between what donors receive and what processed placental products are worth on the market is significant, and it drives a lot of the interest in selling. That gap is a source of ongoing ethical debate, but the structure mirrors blood donation: donors give freely, processors cover their costs and sell the result, and federal law prohibits compensating the donor beyond reimbursing actual expenses.
Private Cord Blood and Tissue Banking
Private banking is the one option involving money that flows in the opposite direction. You pay a private bank to store your baby’s cord blood and placental tissue for your family’s potential future use. Initial processing and shipping fees typically run between $1,200 and $6,000 when banking both blood and tissue, with annual storage fees between $225 and $420 afterward. Banking blood only is cheaper, with initial costs of about $710 to $3,000 and annual fees of $125 to $225.
Medical organizations are cautious about recommending private banking for most families. Both the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Academy of Pediatrics favor public cord blood donation over private storage. Their reasoning: privately banked cord blood is rarely used, quality control tends to be less rigorous than at public banks, and the full cost falls on the family. The main exception is when a family member already has a condition treated with stem cell transplants, where private banking becomes a targeted medical decision.
If you are considering it, compare banks on processing standards, accreditation, storage track record, and total cost over time. A bank that charges less upfront but more annually may cost more across a decade of storage. Choosing private banking also means the cord blood will not be available to the public registry, where it could be a match for a stranger.