The Human Egg Trade: Episode 3 - The Journey

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Justa huads up. Before we get into today's episode, I want to let you know that it includes a description of miscarriage, so take care while listening. Alice Kempton has pretty much always known she wanted to have kids, and since she was sixteen, she's also known that she'd need help to make it happen.

I found out that I would need IVF treatment, and it was all a blur because I hadn't even kissed a boy, so it was something my mum had to process then more than me.

Alice had been born without ovaries, so if she ever wanted to have a child, she would need to use an egg from another woman.

Hearing that I in inverted commas can't have kids naturally got me thinking from that age, well that's something I really want.

And when she was twenty nine, she met someone who really wanted it too.

The dream was always for me to have a family with a person I loved.

This is Paul Kempton, Alice's husband. They met through Paul's brother. Paul was the best man at his wedding, Alice was a bridesmaid and they connected on the dance floor. Within a year of dating, Alice told Paul that if they wanted to have kids, she'd need a donor egg to get pregnant.

No. I certainly didn't know much, if anything, about IVF, let alone a donor. But if you love someone and you love them a lot, and that's someone you want to marry, then you'll do whatever it takes.

The cost of IVF can vary wildly depending on where you live, the kind of reproductive assistance you need, whether you have insurance that covers fertility treatments, and whether travel is involved. If you need a donor egg, like Alice, it can increase costs even more. In Australia, where the Hampton's live, there are very limited options for egg donation. The country has some of the most restrictive regulations in the global egg market. In an effort to prevent exploitation.

I wrote a really long letter, not because I was potentially worried about the result, but I wanted to let her know my true wives not ave turn thirty, and we should have kids, and you need to help me. It was this was going to be the biggest gift someone could give. I sent the letter and I was, you know, probably nervous as it were, but still excited as well. Not nervous, and anyway, very soon she said, I have been waiting for this letter for so long, so.

It was magical. Yeah, it was. It was great.

Alice knew the process wouldn't be easy, but they'd do it together.

I was very keen to live every injection with her and make sure each step of the way. She constantly knew that this was the best thing she was ever going to give someone else, you know, and I'll be a shoulder to cry on. I'll be a late night phone call like anything you're going through. I want to pretend I'm going through because I can't be the one at that stage in the early process having the drugs.

So Alice, her cousin, and Paul started IVF and the path ahead of them. While not without challenges, looked promising.

This beginning was awesome. My cousin was super fertile for a geriatric. She's exceptionally healthy. Yes, she's considered geriatric in the IVF world. So we would laugh about those words going around the room because.

She was just like in her mid thirties.

Exactly, and I was low thirties.

So we were just politive the whole way until it wasn't.

This is episode three of The Human Egg Trade, a special series from Bloomberg's investigations team and the Big Take podcast about the booming global market for human eggs. A team of Bloomberg reporters across five continents and eleven countries have spent the last year trying to understand how human eggs are donated, bought, sold, and moved around the world.

They call their son a quarter million dollar baby.

That's Bloomberg investigative reporter Jessica Brice, who spoke extensively with Ackemptance.

They say, by the time they finished the process with him, they'd spent about a quarter million dollars.

And did they go into debt. They did go into debt.

Yes.

Today on the show, the exhilarating promise, gutting losses, and extreme cost of one family's journey through the global IVF market will continue after the break with twenty donated eggs from Alice's cousin. Alice and Paul's IVF journey was off to an auspicious start with paul sperm. Those twenty eggs made nine viable embryos.

We put a fresh transfer in.

I was fitting healthy, The embryos were looking awesome according to the embryologist. And I was pregnant, you know, at the ten day blood test, and then at the two week and the three week, in the four and the five and the sixth and the seven and they ate and then there was a heartbeat, and then two weeks later another heartbeat.

At fourteen weeks, they went in for a checkup. Paul had been out of town during the first two scants, so it would be the first time they'd see their baby's heartbeat together. Alice works as a veterinarian, so she knows how to read an ultrasound.

And so from the minute that lady put the probe bond, I didn't say heartbeat. And Paul was sitting next to me, and he hadn't been in one yet, and he's holding my hand, and I was like, I remember just saying it's dead.

It's dead, it's dead. And Paul was still asking questions, Oh, what's that?

What's that?

And the lady obviously has to do a thorough scan, so she still has to on her report, right, what's in the top right, the top left, the bottom right, the butt, And I was like, get off my tummy, you know, and just tell me what I know.

I still remember it very clearly.

That first first loss was really hard, and I knew it would be really really taxing in heart on ol and obviously for both of us. But you know, I felt like, you know, keep positive, keep the faith.

The captains still had eight viable embryos, so they tried again and again and again. Over eighteen months, Alice went through a total of seven IVF cycles. She got pregnant five times, and she had five mess carriages, and.

They were horndus.

I became a very bitter person and very glass half empty when a that was not me prior for probably the next year. So I definitely went through what did I do to lose this?

You know?

Did I do too much core exercise? Was it playing tennis? Or what did I eat or what? Like?

What you idiot? You didn't get enough sleep? You know? Did I kill this?

You know? So that is a horrible self reflection to do, but everyone would do that. I feel I've never met someone that has a miscarriage without questioning that.

People around her, people close to her, started to ask if she and Paul were going too far.

I had beautiful friends and found me to lean on. But even by this stage, you know, your seventh one.

When you've got so far, I kept getting pregnant.

Families even starting to say, are you guys flogging a dead horse? You know, like, what's what's your thought process here? And then you just keep looking them in the eye and say I've got pregnant. Specialists say I'm not flogging a dead horse. And the highs to the carrot dangling is to gold, you know, so you press on.

Eventually there were no embryos left, and when Paul and Alice asked her cousin if she'd donate another round of eggs, she told them she couldn't go through it again. Alice and Paul had gone as far down the IVF path as they could. Given their circumstances and Australia's restrictions, they didn't know anyone else they could ask. They decided they'd need to go abroad. That would mean new possibilities, but also navigating new regulatory frameworks. It would also mean new costs.

Yep, we looked at names of clinics.

I have probably forty emails to different clinics in Europe, about ten to South Africa and lots to America before we in Inverticomas made a decision to just chase the American dream because financially it's in a world of its own for IVF, but for really valid reasons.

The Kemptons had a lot on the line, both emotionally and financially. They'd already spent a little more than thirty thousand dollars for IVF and Australia.

Since we were thirty, it's been IRVF. You know, should we could?

We can?

We?

Or is it better for that? While friends were going on holidays or getting houses or you know, equals in your profession doing all that, You're like, oh, I really want to, but our whys is so real?

There?

Why making a family? So even though the US would easily be the most expensive place to get treatment of the countries they were looking at, they decided to stretch for it.

It was the transparency that America has the level of pre qualifying donors and the just the information you could get on them and their family and their siblings and their grandparents.

And that was what certainly got me.

Over the line and got us over line in terms of going down that path.

Once they decided on the US, the next up was to find a donor, and Alice says American doorner agencies had a dizzying number of options.

At first, I was going to design a child, so I was looking for Feeno type only, and I was just like, they're going to be smart, they're going to be athletic, and they're going to be tall and good looking, and you know what, Bugert, I'm going to find it.

I'm going to do this.

But it wasn't just photos. She was also sifting through family medical histories.

I was definitely looking at photos at first for months, and then after a photo I would read and as I said, extensive medical and I'd be like, oh, wow, that poor family. You know, her cousin and her cousin's mum have both had breast cancer, you know, and we know that there is a breast cancer chain. So that's when I might say Oh, maybe not, because we can have that choice. And you know that is horrendous to people that have to go through that. But if I can avoid that, we're so lucky.

Alice says she spent seven months spinning her wheels, struggling with the weed of the choy she was making. She was working full time and spending four hours a day looking at donor profiles. She says it was like a dating app. You could just keep swiping and swiping and swiping without making progress. She went to her therapist for advice.

I said, I'm going crazy. How am I going to make this decision?

Like what if I have to look my kid in the eye and say, I'm so sorry I made the wrong decision. You know. I was that the guilt is already there, and because you could lego piece this potential designer child together, Paul would find me up at three am, you know, just scroll of thing, you know, and I was exhausted.

Her therapist told her to stop looking at photos and focus on what was really important to them. And then one day Alice came upon a profile that seemed special, right somehow? Do you remember what it was about her profile that kind of stood up to you.

Yeah, absolutely her name, because most donors are donor A two one four seven and you never find out their name. And there were even on the email you don't know Karen. I was like, oh Karen, cool name, love it, go girl.

Alice took a quick peek at Karen's photo and then skipped to her medical history, no red flax.

Then I went back to her profile and we reguarded to read first, and I was.

Like, yeah, she likes pizza. This is so cool.

She loves running, like this is my girl, and I can't wait to tell Paul. And then I looked at photo and she just a smile. She's this You could see her jumping out it. You're saying, let me help you. So I vividly remember that, especially because it's on top of, you know, eighteen months of trawling and getting very close, you know, like we had spreadsheets about whether it was health GPA, and then it was literally like what that

So Karen Pets is a model from Argentina.

Karen has spoken at length with her colleague Bloomberg reporter Jessica Brace.

She's tall, she's charismatic, she's really smart, she's very nice, and she's gorgeous.

And she's also a superproducer.

A super producer, a donor who produces far more than the typical fifteen to twenty eggs each cycle.

Her first donation was in January twenty nineteen. She was twenty six years old, and she flew to Los Angeles. She was paid six thousand dollars. The retrieval yielded forty five eggs, and somehow word got out. She still doesn't know exactly how word got out. But within a week or two, this agency called Growing Generations called her up and they said, oh, we want to represent you.

Which meant she could charge a lot more per cycle, tens of thousands of dollars. But Karen told Jessica it wasn't just about the money.

This sort of gives her more purpose in life. We spoke to a lot of egg donors who are very open about saying I only do this for the money. It's an easy way to make a lot of money, and that's not necessarily Karen's case, although she does get paid and compensated very well, just because she is, you know, such an elite donor.

So elite that the Kemptons worried lots of other people might want Karen's eggs too, so they rushed to reach out to her agency before someone else did.

And literally, Paul, I can't remember how long you looked at her profile. But then he's like, right, we need to we need we need to emia it now. I was like, I'm doing I'll do I'll do it, I'll do it. Do it.

A representative from the donor agency helped Alice and Paul exchange letters with Karen, and once that went well, Alice wanted to take it one step further.

I said, would she ever mate with us in scott And she said, look, it's it's really not done, but I've got to go back to Karen.

And Karen was for it.

The meeting was booked for thirty minutes.

And it was just hysterical, like I talk a lot, but so is Karen, and we were just and with Paul like he was able to charme in. It wasn't as it was just two girls with three of us were just chatting Kenny, Kenny, Kenny.

Suddenly time was up. The donor agency said they had to end the call, and we were all like no. Karen and the Kemptons were in They all boarded flights to Portland, Oregon, Karen from Argentina and the Kemptons from Australia. Alice says half her suitcase held presents for Karen. They met for pizza. It was August of twenty nineteen.

Mating her was awesome.

We literally, I think we walked up to each other and in the restaurant and gave each other a big hug, and then there was just no awkwardness. It wasn't like, oh, what do you do in the afternoons? It was just striding to banter.

The three of them swap numbers and started a WhatsApp group chat. This was the kind of openness and connectedness the Kemptons had hoped to find pursuing IVF in the US, But in the back of her mind, Alice says she had concerns. Not long before they made the trip to Portland, Paul had been hospitalized with the flu, and they worried the fever could have affected the viability of his sperm.

I had this parrot in my head just saying remember Paul had the flu in Australia, so I was nervous and really drilling the clinic question wise, like you know, we're not questioning what Karen has to go through, but like I'm going to say you, for the six or seventh time, we are happy to do a freeze all egg cycle, like Paul really fried that sperm, you know, like he was sick.

The Kemptons didn't want to take any chances. They felt like this was their only shot. They'd paid twenty five thousand US dollars for Karen's fee, plus a seventeen thousand dollars agency fee. Then there were fifteen thousand dollars in travel costs to bring Karen to the US. The clinic charged another forty thousand dollars for the procedures Karen's agg retrieval, Paul's sperm collection, fertilizing the egg. Add in expenses for their own plane tickets, hormones for both Karen and Alys,

You have collection day, so that's go Karen, go Paul.

And on Karen's side, things went extremely well. Fifty one eggs with paul sperm nineteen became embryos, and then the kemptins waited for the results of their genetic testing to come in.

It was one of the worst told eyes I remember having, because I could just distrain and agony of waiting.

I was just punching through the motions, trying to enjoy myself, but just petrified. Each day, I'm like counting down the day until we actually knew.

Alice and Paul were at the gym when they got the call.

I was on the treadmill, and the nurses are just so lovely, so they start off obviously very high, ellis how's your day, and then just wham. You know, I'm sorry to say none had survived to be viable, and I just I don't think I said anything.

I went silent. I got off the treadmill, cried.

Went straight up to the and then I didn't leave my computer. I just went straight into you know, how did this happen?

Mode? And I'm going to find out how, and I'm going to make someone.

Accountable because we knew we'd never be able to do it again financially, Like you know, we knew from before we even while you're still positive, you're not talking about it because the thought that you have to do it again isn't there.

But we both knew.

We always knew America was our last chance.

And I remember just needing to walk, go for walk by myself, giving our space and myself space. Like I just thought it was very devastating at that point, and we thought that was the end.

Really.

One of the first things they did was let Karen know what had happened.

I think her first words were, what can I do to help? She was very quick to say, I will donate for free, like so quick, you know, it wasn't even me asking.

She's like, we'll all do it again.

The donor agency ultimately got involved and wouldn't let Karen donate for fere, but they did offer the Kemptons a twenty percent discount on the agency fee. The clinic's medical director said in an interview with Bloomberg, quote, we work with compromised sperm all the time. We thought it was a reasonable plan to move forward at the time, he wrote the Kemptons to let them know how disappointed their whole team was in the outcome, and the clinic offered

We found out on New Year's Eve morning that we had four genetically beautiful embryos.

And less than a year later, in late twenty twenty, the Kempton son Rupert, was born.

It was It's the best best day of my life.

You know. It's just amazing to have fallen in love with someone that you love so much, to go through that heartache that we have over a number of years, and then to actually.

Hold Rupert that to this day would be the most happiest moment of my life. It's an amazing thrill in an amazing achievement.

And in twenty twenty three, the Captains welcomed a daughter, Matilda. Both Matilda and her brother were born from the embryos created from Karen's second agritrouval.

I've always loved having friends and seeing their kids and be.

Like, oh that, that's a little bit of you. Like, I love looking at that.

And so I definitely look at Rupert and Matilda and I'm like, where's Paul, Where's Karen, where's me?

Alice says she sees all three of them and the kids.

I'm headstrong. Yes, Matilda is headstrong. Karen might be headstrong Paul, but it's her tweak on it, you know. So we call Matilda Hurricane because she'll come in.

And Paul Rupert is a very.

Perfectionist, dedicated, He's a beautiful.

Gentle and then Matilda comes in. It just says, I'm knocking that over. You know, here I cam.

In Australia, it's not uncommon for donor conceived people to know the identity of their donors. Several of the country states have passed legislation giving children the right to know their heritage, and Alice and Paul have embraced that culture with their kids. They have a world map up in their home, so Rupert and Matilda can see where Karen lives in Argentina and where the clinic is in Portland. And they've been open with the kids about how they were born.

So we made a decision to make sure we had picture books from the get go, like age appropriate books as they grow up, and even it was important to us for that truthness. And also we're really proud of how much we love Karen, like we would not have our family without her.

So in the end, the time, the heartbreak, the money, it all felt worth it, and the Camptons realize they're lucky they were able to pay for it all. How did you manage to find the money to fund this journey?

I mean over the course of our whole uf journey it would be half a mill and over a number of.

Years that's about half a million Australian dollars, which is just over three hundred thousand US dollars.

And a lot of that has been our own savings, but we've had a fair chunk towards the end, which involved the America, which we've had to borrow. And you know, rather see it as it as an upfront amount. You sort of look at it over the course of your whole life. I think you only live once and you only have one chance of having a family, And yes, it's a lot of money up front, but it's.

An investment in your future.

It's an investment in Your Life.

That was the third episode in The Human Egg Trade, our special series about the booming global market for human eggs. For more in depth reporting on how the human egg has become a precious resource traded around the world, read The Egg, an investigation by Bloomberg BusinessWeek and The Big Take. You can read The Egg on the Bloomberg terminal, Bloomberg dot com or in the January twenty twenty five issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek. This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News.