The United States has few rules governing egg and sperm donation, a Wild West being supercharged by influencers touting it as a cash-cow to millions of young followers. Americans conceived through donors are using social media to fight back.
By Alexandra S. Levine, Forbes Staff
Afew weeks ago, a 19-year-old influencer announced a new hobby to scores of TikTok followers: egg donation. Selling her eggs to women or couples looking to get pregnant was a fast and mostly painless way to make gobs of money, she thought.
“This girl just said she donated her eggs and got a quick $20,000—and I immediately started looking it up and decided that’s going to be my next hobby,” TikToker Gigi Juliana, holding a Starbucks iced coffee, told her audience of 137,000. She claimed the side effects from the invasive surgical procedure are no different than what she already feels after a trip to the med spa (where customers go for botox and filler), so why not? “If you see like 30,000 of my children running around because I’m going to donate eggs like crazy… don’t be alarmed,” she quipped.
Posted on August 20, the video has been watched more than 24 million times, liked 4 million times, shared hundreds of thousands of times and drawn 18,000 comments—many from others who say they, too, are eager to donate their eggs to buy that new car, fund a vacation or, like Gigi, just cash in. (Egg donors often make around $12,000 per cycle, though some can earn as much as $25,000. Repeat donors can rake in more than $70,000 for multiple rounds.)
“Basically a normal day for me…except that I will be richer…sign me up,” wrote one commenter named Lizzy.
“Imma donate my sperm cuz I’m 6”2 and highly educated with no medical problems. Gonna make BANK,” said a male follower. (Some cryobanks offer healthy men up to $1,500 a month.)
But the viral clip also prompted outcry from a vocal and growing online community of donor-conceived people—those born from donated eggs or sperm—who are increasingly using social media to push for laws to better protect kids conceived in this little-regulated space and sound the alarm on the issues that rhetoric like Gigi’s can create.
For one, mass donors can put offspring at risk of accidental incest by donating many times in the same geographic area. Unlike several other countries, the United States has no federal laws limiting the volume of donations one person can make (there are only recommendations from the nonprofit American Society of Reproductive Medicine). Having dozens or hundreds of siblings can also be traumatic for parents and children—issues highlighted in the recent Netflix documentary “Man With 1000 Kids,” about a serial sperm donor who lied his way into donating to hundreds of families around the world before a Dutch court last year barred him from ever doing so again.
There are also safety concerns and potential long-term health consequences for egg donors—especially those who donate repeatedly and therefore inject themselves with high levels of hormones over a prolonged period of time—that have not been thoroughly studied and are near impossible to explain in a seconds-long social media post, which can mislead the teens and 20-somethings who are often the target audience (Gigi was 18 when she made her viral TikTok). The American Society of Reproductive Medicine recommends egg and sperm donors to be at least 21, and that donors younger than that undergo a prior psychological evaluation.
Finally, big payouts may incentivize donors to lie or omit information on their applications, advocates argue, exploiting loopholes in a legal Wild West and lax screening processes where donors self-report any medical issues and are usually not fact-checked by the banks. (They do undergo basic genetic testing.)
“Not everything should be monetized. Not everything should be content.”
“All of these influencers—including this person—are looking at this as a money-making opportunity but not thinking about it long-term,” Laura High, one of the most-followed donor-conceived creators on TikTok, with an audience of nearly 700,000, told Forbes. “This is not an egg that’s going to sit in a petri dish; this is going to become a full-fledged human being. That full-fledged human being is eventually going to see that video. And the fact that this person is treating egg donation, as they said, as a ‘hobby’ is not just dangerous, it’s predatory.”
“I’m totally supportive of donor conception. … I am for ethical donor conception, and that’s the problem, and that’s what we’re not seeing, and that’s what social media is helping perpetuate: the unethical side of it,” High added. “Not everything should be monetized. Not everything should be content.” A week after Gigi’s viral TikTok, she followed-up with a video plugging an agency and egg bank in Southern California. The post was a paid collaboration.
“This was my first time speaking/pondering the topic so I didn’t do any research before posting,” Gigi said in an email.
“After reading through the comments I feel I have a deeper understanding for donating eggs,” she continued. “I didn’t realize the qualifications were so strict, that realistically not even I would be accepted as a donor. While I do understand it is a very rigorous process that takes a huge toll on our bodies, I think that it is beautiful we can give the gift of families to other women that don’t have that ability. While it definitely would not work for everyone, it’s sweet that I could’ve possibly reached someone who helped create a family.”
Social media is dramatically changing conversations around reproductive health and family-building in America, pushing once-private discussions about infertility into the open and normalizing alternatives like in-vitro fertilization (IVF), surrogacy and donors that can help those struggling, as well as singles and same-sex couples, become parents. They’re topics that have become politicized in the post-Roe v. Wade era—a flashpoint in the 2024 presidential race, a target for states like Alabama that have sought to designate unused frozen IVF embryos as human beings, and a partisan lightning rod for Republicans in Congress who’ve repeatedly blocked legislation guaranteeing the right to IVF nationwide. At the same time, the debates are raising awareness around the growing need for these services, protections for them and policies that would make them more accessible. (IVF, a process used with donors, where sperm and egg are mixed in a lab and then implanted in a woman’s uterus to try to make a baby, is not an option for many Americans; a single round can cost more than $30,000 and is generally not covered by insurance.)
But while social media is helping to destigmatize these problems and procedures, it’s also having an unintended consequence: Recasting a serious medical procedure that’s not without risk as something that’s no big deal—even fun, glamorous and above all, highly lucrative. TikTok and Instagram influencers are making trendy “get ready with me” and “day in the life” videos about donating their eggs; sharing viral videos during the retrievals using hashtags like #rich and #money; and in some cases getting paid to post their journeys without disclosing it. The industry contributes, too, as agencies, clinics and egg and sperm banks recruit donors with marketing about the luxury cars and designer bags one can buy by selling their genetic material. (A TikTok from Fairfax EggBank, one of the country’s largest, touted Chanel and Louis Vuitton purses that would be up for grabs with the $48,000 earned. The video, set to Britney Spears’ “Oops! I Did It Again” and liked hundreds of thousands of times, has since been taken down. The bank did not respond to a request for comment.)
The intentions—attracting donors to give more people the opportunity to have families—are commendable. Donating can also open doors for some who use what they earn to help cover tuition or pay off student loans, and many do it altruistically. But some donor-conceived people and experts say the vast majority of social media content that lures donors with fat checks and fancy things is doing more harm than good to the fertility world, violating moral codes by downplaying what’s at stake for donors, recipient parents and future children when creating a human life.
Egg donation is generally low risk, but the risks involved are nonetheless “real and potentially severe,” according to the American Society of Reproductive Medicine. Some donors suffer from “ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome,” when the hormone medications and retrieval procedures cause excessive swelling of the donor’s ovaries, which can result in severe abdominal pain, shortness of breath, vomiting and rapid weight gain that may land them in the hospital. Acute complications like infection, bleeding, loss of an ovary or damage to another reproductive organ could also threaten that woman’s own ability to get pregnant (and it’s not always clear who pays for medical treatment if something goes wrong).
Beyond possible health effects, the get-rich-quick messaging being amplified by influencers and industry alike has also left many donors brushing off or outright ignoring the implications of one day being tracked down by their biological children—a feat now made easier than ever with social media, and commercial DNA tests like 23andMe and Ancestry, that together have all but done away with donor anonymity.
Illustrating a fuller picture and disclosing the risks at the outset is vital to donors’ informed consent, according to Jamie Spiers, director of LGBTQ+ family advocacy at the U.S. Donor Conceived Council, a nonprofit that advocates for the community and has been central to legislative efforts to protect it.
“We’re not against [donor] compensation—it’s just there’s a balance between how much somebody’s getting compensated, and the course of nature, and the ethical concerns, so we just want to… make sure that that’s not the sole thing being highlighted when people are being recruited,” Spiers told Forbes. “Especially early on, it needs to be a more balanced understanding of what they’re getting into.”
Rachel Schiff, the council’s director of marketing, added that the types of posts catching fire on social media prey not only on the donors, but also on the emotionally vulnerable recipients desperate to do whatever they can to have a family.
“There is a lot of misinformation that can get thrown around,” they said. “And just because people want a baby so badly, they’ll read it and take it at face value.”
Romi Slossberg and her wife used a sperm donor to become mothers. After finding Seattle Sperm Bank through Google, Slossberg chose the biological father of her future children based on a small file—a short bio and audio interview, basic genetic testing, yes-or-no answers to medical questions as simple as whether anyone in his family had worn glasses, and a baby photo that she had to trust was really him.
She spent $10,000 on the donor—on top of $80,000 on fertility treatment and surgery where she lives in Colorado—to conceive, only for her daughter to be born deaf in one ear. Slossberg has since tracked down more than a dozen half-siblings, including one who has hearing loss and another who was born missing an arm. When she eventually found the donor through a DNA test, he disclosed that his own sister had the same condition as her daughter (microtia, a birth defect resulting in a malformed ear). Doctors said there was no way of knowing whether the donor was the cause without deeper investigation, and a perfect outcome is never guaranteed in any pregnancy. But the experience led Slossberg to question whether donors are fully and truthfully disclosing their histories.
“The medical records that I was sold did not match the actual medical history of the donor,” the 32-year-old creator, now a mother of two, told Forbes. Today she uses Instagram—where she’s built an audience of 37,000—to advocate for the rights of donor-conceived people, demanding more regulation around donor transparency and verification of their health documents.
“You’re spending money thinking that you’re buying something, and the description of the product is accurate, and then years later, you find out that it wasn’t,” she added. “Obviously, at the end, the result is you have your children. But if they’re sending you something for that amount of money, they should give you accurate information.”
Laura High, one of the most-followed donor-conceived creators on TikTok, advocated for federal fertility fraud legislation on the Hill in 2023. Today, the bill has 53 bipartisan cosponsors.
Dave Columbo
High, the popular creator who calls herself “your donor-conceived person of TikTok,” was born in 1988 through a sperm donor after both her parents struggled with infertility. At the time, couples didn’t typically pick their donors; clinics would instead choose the sperm donor that most closely matched the father’s hair and eye color, ethnic background and religion. The man who’d be raising her was Irish, Scottish, Norwegian and Catholic, and they were told the donor would be just like him.
When High was 26, she learned through an Ancestry DNA test that the donor was, in fact, 100 percent Ashkenazi Jewish. (She said she looks “very Ashkenazi” and had long been a target of antisemitism without understanding why.)
“If the clinic lied about this, what else could they have lied about?” she said.
Contacted by High, the doctor, who is still practicing in New York City, told her the medical records from more than three decades ago were gone and that the donor had been healthy. But the host of health issues High has grappled with, which now include infertility, have left her skeptical and eager for answers.
“I don’t know what I should be expecting for my life. I’m about to have a kid. I have no idea what could potentially be a quarter of them, and it’s scary,” she told Forbes. “How susceptible am I to cancers? To Parkinson’s? To Alzheimer’s? To heart failure? And these are all things that, with proper screening, could be prevented. … I don’t even know if breast cancer runs in his family. I don’t even know if I should be getting mammograms early, and an early mammogram wouldn’t be covered by health insurance because I don’t have a ‘family history’ of it.”
“Unless you’ve gone through medical emergencies like this, it’s something that you don’t understand,” she added. “And if you don’t understand why having a complete medical history is imperative, consider yourself very privileged that you have not been put in that situation.”
At 29, using Ancestry and Facebook, High found her biological father. She wrote him a letter, asking for a conversation and some medical information, and hand-delivered it to his office in New York City. Seven years later, she hasn’t heard back.
There are few laws governing how all this works in the U.S. And though the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, which represents the fertility industry, has issued ethical guidelines, whether and how to follow them is up to those providing services or care. (The Society declined to comment for this story, instead sending Forbes a link to its recommendations, which predate TikTok’s explosion in the U.S.)
Still, creators’ advocacy on and off social media has helped lead to the passage of a number of state laws, and the introduction of federal legislation, that would place guardrails on the space.
In 2022, the nonprofit donor-conceived council and Slossberg, the influencer and recipient parent from Colorado, helped the state become the first and only in the country to ban anonymous sperm and egg donations, granting donor-conceived kids the right to know their donor’s identity at 18 (the United Kingdom and Sweden have similar mandates). It’s also the first and only U.S. law to limit how much one donor can donate, preventing them from giving to more than 25 families and capping egg donors at six cycles. The Colorado law, which will also set the minimum donor age at 21 and create rules for accessing and updating their records and medical history, takes effect in January.
Got a tip about social media or the world of fertility and reproductive health? Reach out securely to Alexandra S. Levine on Signal/WhatsApp at (310) 526–1242.
In 2023, High, the top TikToker, helped usher the introduction of a federal bill that would criminalize so-called “fertility fraud,” where providers misrepresent whose DNA they’re using for IVF or assisted insemination. The issue drew national attention with the Netflix documentary “Our Father,” which tells the story of one of dozens of fertility doctors in the U.S. who’ve been accused of implanting their own sperm in their patients. The legislation is unlikely to move in an election year but has picked up 53 bipartisan cosponsors, and about a dozen states already have similar laws on the books thanks in part to influencers’ advocacy.
And next weekend, for the second year in a row, donor-conceived advocates including Slossberg will gather at the largest meeting-of-the-minds in reproductive health, the Society’s annual “Scientific Congress & Expo” in Denver. Their goal is “advocating for the equivalent of seat belts to the fertility industry,” said High, who protested outside last year’s event with others from the community.
“This is not an industry that creates tables, creates shirts; they’re literally making babies,” she said. “They should be held to the highest standard. And the fact that we don’t have the equivalent of a seat belt should terrify everybody.”
