Baby Business Boom
By Monifa Thomas,
Chicago Sun-Times
| 08. 01. 2008
More Women Apply as Economy Slips
Bad news for the economy can be good news for the baby business.
Some Chicago area fertility clinics say they've seen a surge in women inquiring about becoming egg donors or surrogates for infertile couples, apparently because of the recent economic downturn.
Summer is usually a slow period for donors, but "we have really noticed an increase in calls and inquiries and applications since about April," said Nancy Block, founder of the Center for Egg Options in Northbrook.
Robin von Halle, president of Alternative Reproductive Resources, said she has noticed a similar trend at ARR, an agency that pairs infertile couples with surrogates and egg donors.
The agency typically gets about 30 to 50 calls a day from potential donors, and for the last few months, that number has consistently been on the higher end of the scale, von Halle said.
"We get a lot of people applying to be donors and gestational surrogates at a time when jobs are hard to come by," she said. "A lot of women [are] looking to supplement their income."
Yet only a fraction...
Related Articles
By Emma McDonald Kennedy
| 09.25.2025
In the leadup to the 2024 election, Donald Trump repeatedly promised to make IVF more accessible. He made the commitment central to his campaign, even referring to himself as the “father of IVF.” In his first month in office, Trump issued an executive order promising to expand IVF access. The order set a 90-day deadline for policy recommendations for “lowering costs and reducing barriers to IVF,” although it didn’t make any substantive reproductive healthcare policy changes.
The response to the...
Sir Francis Galton, 1890s, by Eveleen Myers (née Tennant)
npg.org
Public Domain via Wikipedia
As has been discussed in recent issues of Biopolitical Times (1, 2), there are, increasingly, companies that claim to be selling parents better babies by selecting the “best” embryos. These services don’t come cheap – think $50,000, or even more, for embryo testing, plus perhaps as much again for IVF and concomitant services. To most of us, that is extremely expensive...
By Margaux MacColl, The San Francisco Standard | 09.17.2025
Designer babies are coming soon to an IVF clinic near you.
Nucleus Genomics, founded by Kian Sadeghi in 2020, when he was just 20, got its start analyzing genomes to weigh a person’s risk of everything from cancer to ADHD...
By Marianne Lamers, NEMO Kennislink [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 09.23.2025
Een rijtje gespreide vulva’s gaapt de bezoeker aan. Zó ziet een bevalling eruit, en zó een baarmoeder met foetus. Een zwangerschap, maar dan zonder zwangere vrouw, gestript van zorgen, gêne en pijn. De zwangerschapsmodellen en oefenbekkens, te zien in de...