The fertility scandal that sent Pedro Pascal's family fleeing back to Chile

Actor Pedro Pascal is known for his dramatic roles on screen, but 30 years ago, when he was just 20 years old, his father, José Balmaceda, was caught up in the biggest fertility scandal the United States has ever seen.

Key Takeaways:

• Pedro Pascal was born in Chile, and when he was an infant, his parents fled to Denmark, where they received asylum before moving to the United States.

• His father, José Balmaceda, was a sought-after fertility doctor, but in 1995, he and his partners were accused of stealing eggs and selling them to other patients.

• 60 women allegedly had their eggs stolen, resulting in 15 known births.

• After the scandal broke, Balmaceda fled back to Chile. One of his partners fled to Mexico, and another remained to face the charges against him: tax evasion and mail fraud.

• Balmaceda signed a plea agreement in 2022 and returned to the U.S.

• All three doctors were indicted on income tax evasion and mail fraud, but never faced charges for stealing eggs, which was not against the law at the time.

The Backstory:

Actor Pedro Pascal, who uses his mother's last name, immigrated to the United States after his parents fled Chile with Pascal and his older sister due to the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship. They received asylum in Denmark before relocating to Texas and then California.

His father, José Balmaceda, was a fertility doctor; Pascal's mother, Verónica Pascal, was a child psychologist. Pascal previously said that his parents were not "revolutionaries by any stretch of the imagination," but became caught up in helping his mother's cousin, who was "very involved in the opposition movement against the military regime." After his father helped heal and hide someone who had been shot, the person who brought the gunshot victim to Balmaceda was arrested and named the couple to the police, who came looking for them. Pascal was an infant at the time, and the family went into hiding before seeking asylum.

After arriving in the U.S., the couple had two more children, and Balmaceda became a sought-after fertility doctor at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). He and his partner, Dr. Ricardo H. Asch, had developed gamete intrafallopian transfer, or GIFT, in which eggs were harvested and then inserted into a woman's fallopian tubes before artificial insemination. It was considered groundbreaking.

Then, in 1995, Balmaceda, Asch, and Dr. Sergio Stone were accused of stealing patients' eggs and inserting them into other women without anyone's knowledge or consent.

The Details:

The Orange County Register, which won a Pulitzer for its reporting on the scandal, broke the story in May 1995 by reporting on two alleged egg thefts. The headline, "Baby born after doctor took eggs without consent," was only the beginning.

The article shared the story of a woman whose eggs were stolen for another woman, who subsequently became pregnant and gave birth. The woman whose eggs were stolen did not get pregnant. The reporting also revealed allegations of paperwork being altered, "clinical, fiscal and management practice issues," problems with insurance billing, loose cash controls, and the removal of paperwork with the intent to hinder investigations.

Some women didn't know eggs were harvested; other women knew, but were told they would be used for testing, not to create children. The Register also reported that women were given fertility "drugs so powerful and potentially harmful that medical experts said they should not have been used under those circumstances" — including Pergonal, made by Serono Laboratories.

"Pergonal would be used in a procedure where you are trying to get a patient pregnant — period," said Gina Cella, a Serono spokeswoman at the time.

The Register ultimately reported that as many as 60 women had their eggs stolen, resulting in 51 pregnancies with 15 known children born.

Some of the women and their partners spoke out:

• Ashley MacCarthy was tricked into donating her eggs to couples she was told couldn't afford fertility treatments; in reality, her eggs were sold to other patients. "I feel like I was just an egg factory," she said.

• Wanda Nagy underwent a procedure performed by Balmaceda in 1987 and had twins. But her records show that 10 of her 34 harvested eggs were given to other patients without her consent. It is believed that no children resulted, but she often wonders if that's true. "You know, you put your trust in someone and you have high hopes for them and then all of a sudden — boom! — it just drops," Nagy said. "You never want to believe it, and you never think it could be you. It's shocking."

• Pamella Kaoud said at the time, "I never consented to give eggs to anyone — ever." She said she knew Balmaceda had harvested her eggs during a laparoscopy, but she believed they were to be used in testing to determine the cause of her infertility. However, some of her eggs were inserted into another woman.

• Budge and Diane Porter turned to UCI for help with having a second child. Budge had been paralyzed playing football, and they gave UCI $35,000 after taking out a second mortgage and borrowing from family. But then some of Diane's eggs were taken and given to another woman. "We wanted, absolutely, without question, every single egg that was harvested for the chance to be fertilized," said Budge. The other woman allegedly did not give birth, but Diane, upon learning that her eggs had been stolen, said, "They couldn't steal anything more valuable to us. They stole our genetic heritage." She added, "Some people can't understand why we'd be so upset. They say, 'It's just a piece of tissue. What's the big deal?'"

• One patient learned that though she didn't consent to donating her eggs, three of her eggs were given to another woman who then gave birth to a child. "They put me under just to take my eggs," she told the Register. "That's really scary."

• Barbara Parham, who was a patient in 1987, also learned that three of her eggs were stolen. "I could have had babies," she said. "It's too late now. The chance is gone."

• One husband said, "We have been raped on a genetic level. They have literally taken my children from me, or the possibility of those children. We were robbed of that extra chance to have children."

• Renée Presson (now Ballou) told the Register that it was only after the Register called her in 1995 that she learned she had a biological son born seven years earlier. Four of her eggs were stolen and given to another woman. "To find out maybe you have a 7-year-old child out there is devastating," she said. She recalled that she had not checked off the box that said she consented to donate her eggs. “It’s your genetic material. It’s being a mother. Absolutely not.” In an interview with The Guardian in 2025, Renée said she was able to contact the woman who gave birth to her son. They built a relationship, and in 2024, she met her son in person for the first time.

Unmasking the Truth:

The doctors consistently denied participation in egg stealing; however, Asch, according to the Register, told ABC's PrimeTimeLive at the time that he didn't think the number of women involved was as high as the number being reported.

"I don't really think at all it happened," he said. "And the reason I don't know is ... I don't have the records. The university took them or I don't know where they are, you know. I don't have them and I never had them. Like I don't have the biological, er, laboratory records of any sort."

However, one employee of the fertility clinic, Della Morrison, told the Register, that one patient had marked only that she was okay with freezing her eggs not donating them. "On the consent form, there's a list of options: cryopreserving, donation to another patient, research, and destruction. You can mark `yes' or `no' in a box next to each one. She marked just yes on freezing. She didn't mark the others."

But then, after the woman's procedure, Morrison said that Asch asked to see the woman's chart. Two days later, when Morrison took out the chart again, it had been changed. She said several people would have had the opportunity to alter it.

"I was shocked," she said. "The box for donation had been marked. I was freaking out. I couldn't believe that happened."

UCI's fertility clinic shut down in June 1995, a month after the scandal broke, and another clinic run by Balmaceda also shut down. By November of that year, Balmaceda and Asch had both fled the country, with Balmaceda returning to Chile with his wife and two younger children.

• Stone remained in California to face the charges against him, which amounted to income tax evasion and mail fraud. He was convicted in 1997 and fined $50,000.

• Asch fled to Mexico in 1995, where he resumed his fertility practice, both in Mexico City and his native Argentina. Argentine officials detained him on a United States extradition request, but instead of sending him to the United States, they tried him under Argentinian law and determined that the statute of limitations had lapsed. The case was dismissed. He was eventually found and arrested in 2010 in Mexico, but was released in 2011. In 2018, he tried to have his US federal case dismissed but was denied.

• Balmaceda and his wife, Verónica Pascal, ultimately separated after fleeing to Chile, and in 2000, just five years after the scandal was first exposed, she tragically died by suicide. In 2022, after his son, Pedro, had become a well-known actor and nearly three decades after he left the U.S., Balmaceda signed a plea agreement and surrendered. He admitted that he under-reported his taxes in 1991 and 1992 as part of a scheme in which he and other UCI fertility doctors took unreported cash from clients.

As with Stone, a federal grand jury indicted Asch and Balmaceda on multiple charges of mail fraud and income-tax evasion.

Reality Check:

The doctors never faced charges for stealing the women's eggs; there were no laws against it.

Patients filed more than 150 lawsuits against the doctors, and UCI paid out over $23 million in settlements to families, along with millions to the whistleblowers.

The Guardian reported:

Former patients, now victims, gave interviews to Oprah Winfrey, Phil Donahue and Maria Shriver. Some hired private investigators to try to track down the children conceived with their stolen eggs.

Loretta and Basilio Jorge, who learned that a woman had given birth to twins believed to be conceived with Loretta’s eggs, made headlines when they sought custody of the six-year-old boy and girl, who they had arranged to have secretly filmed and photographed. The scandal was quickly turned into a schlocky Lifetime cable TV drama.

Some families agreed to give photos of the children — who were treated like consumer products — to the biological parents, but most biological parents never disputed custody, according to reports.

Despite their own heartache, the biological parents didn't want to take the children from the only parents they had ever known.

Renée explained, “If he had been younger – one or two or three, maybe, or even four – I probably would have sought some visitation. But he was seven. I could never do that to him. Or to them. You know, they were victims, too.”

The Bottom Line:

The UCI fertility scandal was a precursor to the countless fertility industry scandals that have occurred since. Stories of embryo mixups and cases in which doctors used their own sperm to impregnate patients have made headlines for years.

The scandal impacted laws in California immediately; in 1996, SB 1555 ensured it became illegal in California to use someone's sperm, eggs, or embryos without their consent. Yet, the fertility industry remains a billion-dollar 'wild west' with little oversight or regulation, and it continues to leave more victims (especially children) in its wake.