‘A means to an end’: Disturbing report uncovers widespread mistreatment of egg donors

A damning expose on the hidden dangers of egg donation, while preying upon altruistic motives of impressionable young women, was recently published by The Free Press.

In it, numerous women spoke of the complications they have suffered since donating their eggs, all while the fertility industry — described as the “wild west” — remains under-regulated.

Women speak out

If she had known the trauma, she’d never have done it

Kaylene Breeding donated eggs in her 20s. Twice, she was only being reimbursed for her medical and travel expenses; four times, she was paid up to $9,000 per donation. Only one donation resulted in twins, who are being raised in Israel by a gay couple, and Breeding now says she wishes she had never become a donor.

Now, years later, her own fertility has been practically destroyed; she is on the verge of a hysterectomy due to endometriosis and adenomyosis, which her doctors say they believe is due to the large amounts of estrogen she received during the egg donation process.

She is an administrator for an egg donor Facebook group with thousands of members — many with similar stories. Breeding lives in chronic pain today, and said stories of other donors meeting their biological children is near-traumatizing for her.

“They wreck me,” she said, adding that if she knew what egg donation would do to her, she would never have done it. “There’s no amount of money that could cover the pain I’m in.”

Today, Breeding sends notes and gifts to her biological children, hoping they will be passed on by the clinic to the parents raising them. She has never received a response.

“It hurts more now knowing I’m facing a hysterectomy,” she told The Free Press tearfully. “I will continue to try.”

She nearly lost her own life

Another donor, who remained anonymous, said egg donation was sold to her as a quick, easy process without much risk. “I had the mindset at 21 of ‘Hey, I’m not using my eggs, so you can have ’em,’ without really having any background or insight to what that process is,” she said.

Yet this donor ended up with ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS), in which the ovaries swell and leak fluid into the abdomen. It’s a known risk of egg donation, yet it’s frequently downplayed as rare to assuage the fears of would-be donors. The anonymous donor’s case of OHSS was so severe that she almost died, with fluid accumulating around her lungs; she also experienced chronic vomiting, decreased urine output, and severe fatigue. Her symptoms were so overwhelming that she couldn’t even walk.

An “egg machine,” not a patient

Lauren H. was a donor while she attended Columbia University in 2012, and said, in the process, she felt like an “egg machine.” After developing OHSS, she had to fight to get access to her medical information. A nurse asked her, “Why would you want to see your file?”

Lauren was only able to get the file last year, over 10 years after donating her eggs. The reason for this, she said, is because the fertility clinics don’t view the donors as their patients; the people purchasing the eggs are seen as the patients instead.

Today, Lauren said she doesn’t even know if her egg donations resulted in any children, because the clinic she used will not tell her. This has led to confusion and emotional upheaval for her.

“When someone asks me if I have kids, I don’t know how to answer that question because I don’t know,” she said.

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She held her own biological child

Ariel Wiggins was lauded as a “high egg donor,” as she could produce 35-40 eggs in a single cycle; her clinic crudely referred to her as a “cheap date – the most bang for your buck.” She had OHSS three times, but that didn’t compare to the emotional trauma she experienced. Wiggins even worked at the clinic where she donated her eggs for a time, and there were occasions when she knew the children there were her biological children. Once, she even held one of her biological children.

“I definitely went home and cried about that because I wanted nothing more than to [say to the parents] like, ‘Hey, I was your donor,’ but I couldn’t,” she said. “I don’t think there should be any anonymous donations for the psychological well-being of the donor-conceived children.”

Evasion and lies

Still another donor, Angela Woodhead, is scared for the children she may have helped create. After donating, she found out she has a vascular malformation in her brain that is potentially hereditary; she tried to inform the clinic so they could pass the information on to any children she may have created, but they failed to return her calls.

When she finally was able to get in touch with the clinic, they said her records had been destroyed. “Even though I don’t know them, I feel that I have a responsibility for their health, happiness, and safety, because I am responsible for them existing,” she said.

Woodhead later found out her records had never actually been destroyed.

No control and no rights

52-year-old Tonya Calilung discovered that egg donors have virtually no rights once their eggs have been taken.

She donated eggs to help a friend have children; that friend successfully gave birth to three children. There were, however, 16 embryos left over. Citing the high costs of storage, the friend decided to donate the embryos, against Calilung’s wishes.

With no legal rights to her own biological children, there was nothing she could do. Her friend later told her that at least some of the embryos had resulted in successful pregnancies.

“She gets the notifications; I don’t,” Calilung said. “I lost control. But in reality, I never even had control over my eggs.”

Risks they never saw coming

Breeding told The Free Press she believes there is not much research into the effects of egg donation for a reason: it could destroy a lucrative industry. “Nobody wants to do the research because, frankly, I’m assuming they’re afraid of what we would discover,” she said.

Dr. Wendy Chavkin, a professor emerita of public health and obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University, admitted that there is little knowledge into the long-term effects of egg donation. “What we’re worried about is what does this do, to have this exposure to high-level hormones and to have them repeatedly,” she said.

Many of the women who became egg donors said they were not warned of what they could potentially face. “These were never presented to me as in ‘these are real risks that could impact the rest of your life,’” Breeding said. “I never saw this coming.”

This is not unusual; The Free Press cited one study which found that of over 400 ads recruiting egg donors, the majority failed to disclose any potential risks. Another study found that 15% had serious complications, including OHSS, twisted ovaries, pelvic infections, internal hemorrhaging, and surgical mistakes.

While the United States may be one of the worst offenders, this is an international problem. Scotland, for example, launched a campaign urging young people to donate their sperm and eggs. There were no risks – none – addressed on the Healthier Scotland website.

Dr. Diane Tober, a medical anthropologist and associate professor at the University of Alabama, is one of the few people researching the effects of egg donation. Tober previously spoke about how fertility clinics specifically tell women the risks of donation are extremely low, which doesn’t match the reality.

“In fact, the few articles that had been published found that immediate complications, for example, for a common side effect known as ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS), was much higher – somewhere between 5 to 13 percent, depending upon the article,” Tober said. “I also discovered that there had been no longitudinal studies specifically looking at the impact of egg donation on donor health and well-being over time.”

Wendy Kramer, director and co-founder of the Donor Sibling Registry, agreed that the risks are downplayed. “In our first published study of 155 egg donors, we found that 30.3% reported Ovarian Hyper Stimulation Syndrome (OHSS),” she wrote. “In our second survey of 176 egg donors in 2014, we found that 32.4% of egg donors reported complications such as OHSS and infection. In our third Study of 363 egg donors in 2021, 22.4% reported experiencing OHSS.”

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Predatory exploitation

The Free Press noted that the United States is one of the largest suppliers of donor eggs, specifically because the industry has virtually no regulation or oversight, nor a limit on how much money women can get for selling their eggs. This puts financially vulnerable women at high risk for exploitation. Egg donation is sold to them as a means of making money easily, while doing something altruistic for others.

Tober told The Free Press that egg donation companies manipulate women into selling their eggs by making them feel special and desirable. “That made me feel really good that somebody wanted my genetics, that they thought I was good enough,” one former egg donor reportedly told Tober, explaining, “It’s predatory.”

Meanwhile, the fertility industry has moved on to a new way of marketing their schemes: social media.

TikTok influencers have begun selling their followers on egg donation — again, without disclosing potential risks. It’s not just individual influencers doing this; the agencies themselves are pushing the trend. One posted a video with the title, “Showing up to donate your eggs for the 4th time but this time you’re getting paid $25k,” while another showcased one of their donors, who said she was “currently on my third egg donation… I just want to describe the process so that you can see that if I can do it, you can do it.”

But what it could cost the donor doesn’t matter; according to Tober, they are just “a means to an end.” And many of the women who decide to become donors do so because they are young women facing financial problems; the fertility industry counts on this desperation to attract these vulnerable women.

“I was 22, thinking about my immediate financial future. How do I live in the city for the next few months?” Lauren said. “I hadn’t yet thought deeply about what it might mean to be a parent.”

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