{"id":320455,"date":"2024-10-19T13:33:10","date_gmt":"2024-10-19T18:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=320455"},"modified":"2024-10-17T23:40:53","modified_gmt":"2024-10-18T04:40:53","slug":"tiktok-influencers-encourage-egg-donation-teens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/tiktok-influencers-encourage-egg-donation-teens\/","title":{"rendered":"TikTok influencers encourage egg donation for teens… without telling the whole story"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

A new frontier has sprung up in the already wildly unregulated IVF industry, and it\u2019s not what one might expect: TikTok influencers are now selling 18-year-old users of the app on egg donation, <\/span>Forbes<\/span><\/a> reports. <\/span><\/p>\n

The IVF and ART <\/span>industry<\/span><\/a> is <\/span>virtually<\/span><\/a> unregulated<\/span><\/a> worldwide<\/span><\/a>, and it is particularly predatory when it comes to low-income women \u2013 either as surrogates or as egg donors. <\/span><\/p>\n

Egg donors are <\/span>not adequately warned<\/span><\/a> about the <\/span>risks<\/span><\/a> of the process. The long term effects of large doses of hormones to mature as many eggs as possible \u2013 more eggs than would normally mature per cycle \u2013 have simply not been studied. Fortunately there is a lower age limitation for egg donation \u2013 typically around 20 or 21 \u2013 but the TikTok algorithm reaches a much younger audience.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The slick social media presence of several egg donation agencies puts a cute and charming gloss on the process, playing up how \u201cselfless\u201d the act is while simultaneously flashing cash and designer purses to broke college-age women.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A search for \u201cegg donation\u201d on TikTok yields not only influencers, but agencies engaging in viral trends and touting the money that can be made from donating eggs. One such agency\u2019s TikTok post was titled, \u201cShowing up to donate your eggs for the 4th time but this time you\u2019re getting paid $25k.\u201d Another shows a pretty blonde girl answering \u201cFrequently asked questions I get as a five time egg donor.\u201d Another agency shows the story of Kelsey, who says she\u2019s \u201ccurrently on my third egg donation\u2026 I just want to describe the process so that you can see that if I can do it, you can do it.\u201d Penny Gsell starts her video, \u201cI paid for a week long trip to Italy only using the money that I made by donating my eggs.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Many agencies pay potential or actual donors, recipient parents, or influencers with large audiences, to make these posts promoting their industry.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

READ: Disturbing story exposes egg donation process for surrogacy agency in China<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

TikTok influencer Gigi Juliana explained her astonishment from the front seat of her car as she sipped on her Starbucks. \u201cThis girl just said she donated her eggs and got a quick $20,000\u2014and I immediately started looking it up and decided that\u2019s going to be my next hobby,\u201d she said, comparing the potential side effects to a day at the med spa. \u201cIf you see like 30,000 of my children running around because I\u2019m going to donate eggs like crazy\u2026 don\u2019t be alarmed.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Gigi later said that she is ineligible to donate eggs, but posted a paid promotional video for a Southern California agency.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If Gigi\u2019s audience of over 137,000 cares to look into the issue more, there are other influencers \u2013 also on TikTok \u2013 who do caution about the unregulated nature of IVF, especially serial donation, and what it could mean for donor-conceived children. <\/span><\/p>\n

Stand-up comedian <\/span>Laura High<\/span><\/a>, who calls herself \u201cYour Donor Conceived Person of TikTok\u201d was conceived in 1988 when her parents went to an infertility clinic. While the clinic told her parents their sperm donor would match the father \u2013 Scottish, Norwegian, and Irish \u2013 they actually used the sperm of a 100% Ashkenazi Jewish man.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf the clinic lied about this, what else could they have lied about?\u201d High said to Forbes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI 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,\u201d she told Forbes. \u201cHow 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. \u2026 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\u2019 of it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cUnless you’ve gone through medical emergencies like this, it’s something that you don’t understand,\u201d she added. \u201cAnd 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.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

High is an advocate against fertility fraud \u2013 which includes swapping out intended sperm or gametes for their own, or for that of another donor. So far, according to <\/span>RightToKnow.us<\/span><\/a>, only Iowa and Nevada have broad-based fertility fraud legislation, with some laws in other states being enacted only over the past few years, despite IVF having been legal for several decades.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not an industry that creates tables, creates shirts; they’re literally making babies,\u201d she said. \u201cThey should be held to the highest standard. And the fact that we don’t have the equivalent of a seat belt should terrify everybody.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Urge Walmart, Costco, Kroger, and other major chains to resist pressure to dispense the abortion pill<\/i><\/b><\/i><\/b><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new frontier has sprung up in the already wildly unregulated IVF industry, and it\u2019s not what one might expect: TikTok influencers are now selling 18-year-old users of the app on egg donation, Forbes reports. The IVF and ART industry is virtually unregulated worldwide, and it is particularly predatory when it comes to low-income women […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":606,"featured_media":260013,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[4,3473],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nTikTok influencers encourage egg donation for teens... without telling the whole story<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The slick social media presence of several egg donation agencies plays up how \u201cselfless\u201d the act is while flashing cash to broke teens.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/tiktok-influencers-encourage-egg-donation-teens\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" 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