The Secret Lives of Egg Donors: The Strange Hell Women Go Through to Donate Their Eggs
By Colette Shade,
VICE Broadly
| 01. 17. 2016
Untitled Document
What will a young woman do for $8,000 dollars? Eight grand is the going rate on a healthy woman's eggs, paid to her in a lump sum by fertility clinics. We Are Egg Donors is a website that serves as a repository of stories about the strange hell women put themselves through to receive that lump sum. The stories range from body horror tales that involve "overstimulated ovaries" to anxious frets about the surreal experience of having a child you've never met, and a few feel-good yarns about a woman who met her donated egg baby and formed a special bond.
Ultimately, the site offers women considering going through a rather extreme medical process a little more transparency than most fertility clinics are willing to give. It's that transparency that's made We Are Egg Donors (WAED) a nasty thorn in the side of the fertility industry.
For instance, after would-be donor Kari waited two years to be matched with a couple looking to conceive, she backed out after reading about all the health issues current and former donors...
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A German translation of this interview will be published in May 2026 in the German GID MAGAZIN, which focuses on the market for reproductive technologies. For more information, visit: Gen-ethisches Netzwerk
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