Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: Justa heads up before we get into today's episode, I
Speaker 2: want to let you know that it includes a description
Speaker 2: of miscarriage, so take care while listening. Alice Kempton has
Speaker 2: pretty much always known she wanted to have kids, and
Speaker 2: since she was sixteen, she's also known that she'd need
Speaker 2: help to make it happen.
Speaker 3: I found out that I would need IVF treatment, and
Speaker 3: it was all a blur because I hadn't even kissed
Speaker 3: a boy, so it was something my mum had to
Speaker 3: process then more than me.
Speaker 2: Alice had been born without ovary's so if she ever
Speaker 2: wanted to have a child, she would need to use
Speaker 2: an egg from another woman.
Speaker 3: Hearing that I in inverted commas can't have kids naturally
Speaker 3: got me thinking from that age, well that's something I
Speaker 3: really want.
Speaker 2: And when she was twenty nine, she met someone who
Speaker 2: really wanted it.
Speaker 4: To The dream was always for me to have a
Speaker 4: family with a person I loved.
Speaker 2: This is Paul Kempton, Alice's husband. They met through Paul's brother.
Speaker 2: Paul was the best man at his wedding, Alice was
Speaker 2: a bridesmaid and they connected on the dance floor. Within
Speaker 2: a year of dating, Alice told Paul that if they
Speaker 2: wanted to have kids, she'd need a donor egg to
Speaker 2: get pregnant. No.
Speaker 4: I certainly didn't know much, if anything, about IVF, let
Speaker 4: alone a donor. But if you love someone and you
Speaker 4: love them a lot, and that's someone you want to marry,
Speaker 4: then you'll do whatever it takes.
Speaker 2: The cost of IVF can vary wildly depending on where
Speaker 2: you live, the kind of reproductive assistance you need, whether
Speaker 2: you have insurance that covers fertility treatments, and whether travel
Speaker 2: is involved. If you need a donor egg, like Alice,
Speaker 2: it can increase costs even more. In Australia, where the Kemptons,
Speaker 2: there are very limited options for egg donation. The country
Speaker 2: has some of the most restrictive regulations in the global
Speaker 2: egg market. In an effort to prevent exploitation, eggs must
Speaker 2: truly be donated there, meaning donors must give up their
Speaker 2: eggs altruistically. No payment for the donation is allowed. That
Speaker 2: means that finding a donor in Australia can be really hard,
Speaker 2: and donation almost always happens between people who know each other.
Speaker 2: For Alice and Paul, there was only one family member
Speaker 2: they could ask Alice's cousin.
Speaker 3: I wrote a really long letter, not because I was
Speaker 3: potentially worried about the result, but I wanted to let
Speaker 3: her know my true wives not if turn thirty and
Speaker 3: we should have kids and you need to help me.
Speaker 3: It was this was going to be the biggest gift
Speaker 3: someone could give. I sent the letter and I was,
Speaker 3: you know, probably nervous as a wered, but still excited
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 1: So not nervous.
Speaker 3: And anyway, very soon she said, I have been waiting
Speaker 3: for this letter for so long, so it was magical. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was.
Speaker 1: It was great.
Speaker 2: Alice knew the process wouldn't be easy, but they'd do
Speaker 2: it together.
Speaker 3: I was very keen to live every injection with her
Speaker 3: and make sure each step of the way. She constantly
Speaker 3: knew that this was the best thing she was ever
Speaker 3: going to give someone else. You know, and I'll be
Speaker 3: a shoulder to cry on. I'll be a late night
Speaker 3: phone call, like anything you're going through. I want to
Speaker 3: pretend I'm going through because I can't be the one
Speaker 3: at that stage in the early process having the drugs.
Speaker 2: So Alice, her cousin, and Paul started IVF and the
Speaker 2: path ahead of them while not without challenges, looked promising.
Speaker 3: This beginning was awesome. My cousin was super fertile for
Speaker 3: a geriatric. She's exceptionally healthy. Yes, she's considered geriatric in
Speaker 3: the IRVF world. So we would laugh about those words
Speaker 3: going around the room because.
Speaker 2: She was just like in her mid thirties.
Speaker 1: Exactly, and I was blow thirties.
Speaker 3: So we we were just positive the whole way until
Speaker 3: it wasn't.
Speaker 2: This is episode three of The Human Egg Trade, a
Speaker 2: special series from Bloomberg's investigations team and the Big Take
Speaker 2: podcast about the booming global market for human eggs. A
Speaker 2: team of Bloomberg reporters across five continents and eleven countries
Speaker 2: have spent the last year trying to understand how human
Speaker 2: eggs are donated, bought, sold, and moved around the world.
Speaker 2: We've covered how a teenage girl was lured into the
Speaker 2: egg trade in India, and how police say women's eggs
Speaker 2: were stolen in Greece, cases where egg donation led to
Speaker 2: exploitation and violated local laws. In this episod pisode, we
Speaker 2: focus on one couple whose experience navigating the fertility industry
Speaker 2: as egg recipients brought them a different set of challenges.
Speaker 2: They wanted access to a market they felt offered transparency.
Speaker 2: They especially wanted information about potential donors. They wanted the
Speaker 2: best they could afford.
Speaker 5: They call their son a quarter million dollar baby.
Speaker 2: That's Bloomberg investigative reporter Jessica Brice, who spoke extensively with
Speaker 2: the Kemptons.
Speaker 5: They say, by the time they finished the process with him,
Speaker 5: they'd spent about a quarter million dollars.
Speaker 2: And did they go into debt. They did go into debt.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: Today on the show, the exhilarating promise, gutting losses, and
Speaker 2: extreme cost of one family's journey through the global IVF
Speaker 2: market will continue after the break with twenty donated eggs
Speaker 2: from Alice's cousin Alison. Paul's IVF journey was off to
Speaker 2: an auspicious start with paul sperm. Those twenty eggs made
Speaker 2: nine viable embryos.
Speaker 1: We put a fresh transfer in.
Speaker 3: I was fitting healthy, The embryos were looking awesome according
Speaker 3: to the embryologist. And I was pregnant, you know, at
Speaker 3: the ten day blood test, and then at the two
Speaker 3: week and the three week, in the four and the
Speaker 3: five and the sixth and the seven and they ate,
Speaker 3: and then there was a heartbeat, and then two weeks
Speaker 3: later another heartbeat.
Speaker 2: At fourteen weeks, they went in for a checkup. Paul
Speaker 2: had been out of town during the first two scants,
Speaker 2: so it would be the first time they'd see their
Speaker 2: baby's heartbeat together. Alice works as a veterinarian, so she
Speaker 2: knows how to read an ultrasound.
Speaker 3: And so from the minute that lady put the probe bond,
Speaker 3: I didn't say heartbeat. And Paul was sitting next to
Speaker 3: me and he hadn't been in one yet, and he's
Speaker 3: holding my hand, and I was like, I remember, just
Speaker 3: it's dead.
Speaker 1: It's dead, it's dead. And Paul was still asking questions, Oh,
Speaker 1: what's that? What's that?
Speaker 3: And the lady obviously has to do a thorough scan,
Speaker 3: so she still has to on her report, right, what's
Speaker 3: in the top right, the top left, the bottom right,
Speaker 3: the butt?
Speaker 1: And I was like, get off my tummy, you know,
Speaker 1: and just tell me what I know.
Speaker 4: I still remember it very clearly. That first first loss
Speaker 4: was really hard, and I knew it would be really
Speaker 4: really taxing and heard on OL and obviously for both
Speaker 4: of us, but you know, I felt like, you know,
Speaker 4: keep positive, keep the faith.
Speaker 2: The captains still had eight viable embryos, so they tried
Speaker 2: again and again and again. Over eighteen months, Alice went
Speaker 2: through a total of seven IVF cycles. She got pregnant
Speaker 2: five times, and she had five mess carriages.
Speaker 1: And they were horrendous.
Speaker 3: I became a very bitter person and very glass half
Speaker 3: empty when that was not me prior for probably the
Speaker 3: next year. So I definitely went through what did I
Speaker 3: do to lose this?
Speaker 6: You know?
Speaker 3: Did I do too much core exercise? Was it playing tennis?
Speaker 3: Or what did I eat or what?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 1: What you idiot? You didn't get enough sleep?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 1: Did I kill this? You know?
Speaker 3: So that is a horrible self reflection to do, but
Speaker 3: everyone would do that. I feel I've never met someone
Speaker 3: that has a miscarriage without questioning that.
Speaker 2: People around her, people close to her, started to ask
Speaker 2: if she and Paul were going too far.
Speaker 3: I had beautiful friends and found me to lean on.
Speaker 3: But even by this stage, you know, your seventh one,
Speaker 3: when you've got so far, I kept getting pregnant. Families
Speaker 3: even starting to say, are you guys flogging a dead horse?
Speaker 3: You know, like, what's what's your thought process here? And
Speaker 3: then you just keep looking at them in the and
Speaker 3: say I've got pregnant. Specialists say I'm not flogging a
Speaker 3: dead horse. And the highs to the carrot dangling is
Speaker 3: to gold, you know, so you press on.
Speaker 2: Eventually there were no embryos left, and when Paul and
Speaker 2: Alice asked her cousin if she'd donate another round of eggs,
Speaker 2: she told them she couldn't go through it again. Alice
Speaker 2: and Paul had gone as far down the IVF path
Speaker 2: as they could. Given their circumstances and Australia's restrictions, They
Speaker 2: didn't know anyone else they could ask. They decided they'd
Speaker 2: need to go abroad. That would mean new possibilities, but
Speaker 2: also navigating new regulatory frameworks. It would also mean new costs.
Speaker 2: That's after the break in their home country Australia. Alison
Speaker 2: Paul Kempton had gone as far as they could to
Speaker 2: have a child through IVF, so they decided to look
Speaker 2: at clinics in other parts of the world. They both
Speaker 2: have fair hair and fair skin and felt it was
Speaker 2: important for their baby to look like they did. They
Speaker 2: also wanted a donor who shared their active lifestyle, who
Speaker 2: had no history of family illness and whose eggs had
Speaker 2: already been used to conceive a child. So you looked
Speaker 2: at every single potential country outside of Australia that you could.
Speaker 1: Yep, we looked at names of clinics.
Speaker 3: I have probably forty emails to different clinics in Europe,
Speaker 3: about ten to South Africa and lots to America before
Speaker 3: we in Inverticomas made a decision to just chase the
Speaker 3: American tree because financially it's in a world of its
Speaker 3: own for IVF, but for really valid reasons.
Speaker 2: The Kemptons had a lot on the line, both emotionally
Speaker 2: and financially. They'd already spent a little more than thirty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars for IVF in Australia.
Speaker 1: Since we were thirty. It's been IRVF. You know, should
Speaker 1: we could? We can?
Speaker 5: We?
Speaker 3: Or is it better for that? While friends were going
Speaker 3: on holidays or getting houses or you know, equals in
Speaker 3: your profession doing all that, You're like, oh, I really
Speaker 3: want to, but our whys is so real?
Speaker 5: There?
Speaker 2: Why making a family? So even though the US would
Speaker 2: easily be the most expensive place to get treatment of
Speaker 2: the countries they were looking at, they decided to stretch
Speaker 2: for it.
Speaker 4: It was the transparency that America has the level of
Speaker 4: pre qualifying donors and the information you could get on
Speaker 4: them and their family and their siblings and their grandparents.
Speaker 4: And that was what certainly got me over the line
Speaker 4: and got us over line in terms of going down
Speaker 4: that path.
Speaker 2: Once they decided on the US, the next up was
Speaker 2: to find a donor, and Alice says American doorner agencies
Speaker 2: had a dizzying number of options.
Speaker 3: At first, I was going to design a child, so
Speaker 3: I was looking for Feeno type only, and I was
Speaker 3: just like, they're going to be smart, they're going to
Speaker 3: be athletic, and they're going to be tall and good looking,
Speaker 3: and you know what, Bugat, I'm going to find it.
Speaker 1: I'm going to do this.
Speaker 2: But it wasn't just photos. She was also sifting through
Speaker 2: family medical histories.
Speaker 3: I was definitely looking at photos at first for months,
Speaker 3: and then after a photo I would read and as
Speaker 3: I said, extensive medical and I'd be like, oh, wow,
Speaker 3: that poor family. You know, her cousin and her cousin's
Speaker 3: mum have both had breast cancer, you know, and we
Speaker 3: know that there is a breast cancer chain. So that's
Speaker 3: when I might say Oh, maybe not, because we can
Speaker 3: have that choice. And you know that he's horrendous to
Speaker 3: people that have to go through that. But if I
Speaker 3: can avoid that, we're so lucky.
Speaker 2: Alice says she spent seven months spinning her wheels, struggling
Speaker 2: with the weed of the choice she was making. She
Speaker 2: was working full time and spending four hours a day
Speaker 2: looking at donor profiles. She says it was like a
Speaker 2: dating app. You could just keep swiping and swiping and
Speaker 2: swiping without making progress. She went to her therapist for advice.
Speaker 1: I said, I'm going crazy. How am I going to
Speaker 1: make this decision?
Speaker 3: Like what if I have to look my kid in
Speaker 3: the eye and say, I'm so sorry I made the
Speaker 3: wrong decision.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: I was that the guilt is already there, and because
Speaker 3: you could lego piece this potential designer child together, Paul
Speaker 3: would find me up at three am.
Speaker 1: You know, just scroll, I think, you know, And I
Speaker 1: was exhausted.
Speaker 2: Her therapist told her to stop looking at photos and
Speaker 2: focus on what was really important to them. And then
Speaker 2: one day Alice came upon a profile that seemed special,
Speaker 2: right somehow? Do you remember what it was about her
Speaker 2: profile that kind of stood up to you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely her name, because most donors are donor A
Speaker 3: two one four seven and you never find out their name.
Speaker 1: And there was even on the email you don't know Karen.
Speaker 3: I was like, oh Karen, cool name, love it, go girl.
Speaker 2: Alice took a quick peek at Karen's photo and then
Speaker 2: skipped to her medical history, no red flax.
Speaker 3: Then I went back to her profile and we reguarded
Speaker 3: to read first, and I was like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she likes pizza. This is so cool.
Speaker 3: She loves running, like this is my girl, and I
Speaker 3: can't wait to tell Paul. And then I looked at
Speaker 3: photo and she just a smile. She's this You could
Speaker 3: see her jumping out it. You're saying, let me help you.
Speaker 3: So I vividly remember that, especially because it's on top of,
Speaker 3: you know, eighteen months of trawling and getting very close,
Speaker 3: you know, like we had spreadsheets about whether it was
Speaker 3: health GPA, and then it was literally like what that
Speaker 3: spreadsheet clear, We've found Karen. Paul needs to wake up,
Speaker 3: I need to shut we need to get onto this
Speaker 3: because she's going to be snapped up.
Speaker 5: So Karen Pets is a model from Argentina.
Speaker 2: Karen has spoken at length with her colleague Bloomberg reporter
Speaker 2: Jessica Brace.
Speaker 5: She's tall, she's charismatics, she's really smart, she's very nice.
Speaker 1: And she's she's gorgeous.
Speaker 2: And she's also a superproducer. A super producer, a donor
Speaker 2: who produces far more than the typical fifteen to twenty
Speaker 2: eggs each cycle.
Speaker 5: Her first donation was in January twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: She was twenty six years.
Speaker 5: Old, and she flew to Los Angeles. She was paid
Speaker 5: six thousand dollars. She the retrieval yielded forty five eggs,
Speaker 5: and somehow word got out. She still doesn't know exactly
Speaker 5: how word got out. But within a week or two,
Speaker 5: this agency called Growing Generations called her up and they said, oh,
Speaker 5: we want to represent you.
Speaker 2: Which meant she could charge a lot more per cycle,
Speaker 2: tens of thousands of dollars. But Karen told Jessica it
Speaker 2: wasn't just about the money.
Speaker 5: This sort of gives her more purpose in life. We
Speaker 5: spoke to a lot of egg donors who are very
Speaker 5: open about saying I only do this for the money.
Speaker 5: It's an easy way to make a lot of money,
Speaker 5: and that's not necessarily Karen's case, although she does get
Speaker 5: paid and compensated very well, just because she is, you know,
Speaker 5: such an elite donor.
Speaker 2: So elite that the Kemptons worried lots of other people
Speaker 2: might want Karen's eggs too, so they rushed to reach
Speaker 2: out to her agency before someone else did.
Speaker 3: And literally, Paul, I can't remember how long you looked
Speaker 3: at her profile, but.
Speaker 1: Then he's like, right, we need to, we need to,
Speaker 1: we need to emig it.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm doing I'll do I'll do it,
Speaker 1: I'll do it.
Speaker 4: Do it.
Speaker 2: A representative from the donor agency helped Alice and Paul
Speaker 2: exchange letters with Karen, and once that went well, Alice
Speaker 2: wanted to take it one step further.
Speaker 3: I said, would she ever mate with us in scott
Speaker 3: And she said, look, it's it's really not done, but
Speaker 3: I've got to go back to Karen.
Speaker 1: And Karen was for it.
Speaker 2: The meeting was booked for thirty minutes.
Speaker 3: And it was just hysterical, like I talk a lot,
Speaker 3: but so is Karen, and we were just and with
Speaker 3: Paul like he was able to chime in. It wasn't
Speaker 3: as it was just two girls with three of us
Speaker 3: were just chatting.
Speaker 1: Kenny Kenny Kenny.
Speaker 2: Suddenly time was up. The donor agency said they had
Speaker 2: to end the call.
Speaker 1: And we were all like no.
Speaker 2: Karen and the Kemptons were in They all boarded flights
Speaker 2: to Portland, Oregon, Karen from Argentina and the Kemptons from Australia.
Speaker 2: Alice says half her suitcase held presents for Karen. They
Speaker 2: met for pizza. It was August of twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: Mating her was awesome.
Speaker 3: We literally, I think we walked up to each other
Speaker 3: in the restaurant and gave each other a big hug
Speaker 3: and then there was just no awkwardness. It wasn't like, oh,
Speaker 3: what do you do in the afternoons? It was just
Speaker 3: straighting to banter.
Speaker 2: The three of them swap numbers and started a WhatsApp
Speaker 2: group chat. This was the kind of openness and connectedness
Speaker 2: the Kemptons had hoped to find pursuing IVF in the US,
Speaker 2: But in the back of her mind, Alice says she
Speaker 2: had concerns. Not long before they made the trip to Portland,
Speaker 2: Paul had been hospitalized with the flu, and they worried
Speaker 2: the fever could have affected the viability of his sperm.
Speaker 3: I had this parrot in my head, just saying, remember
Speaker 3: Paul had the flu in Australia, so I was nervous
Speaker 3: and really drilling the clinic question wise, like you know,
Speaker 3: we're not questioning what Karen has to go through, but
Speaker 3: like I'm going to say, you, for the six or
Speaker 3: seventh time, we are happy to do a freeze all
Speaker 3: egg cycle, like Paul really fried that sperm, you know,
Speaker 3: like he was sick.
Speaker 2: The Kemptons didn't want to take any chances. They felt
Speaker 2: like this was their only shot. They'd paid twenty five
Speaker 2: thousand US dollars for Karen's fee, plus a seventeen thousand
Speaker 2: dollars agency fee. Then there were fifteen thousand dollars in
Speaker 2: travel costs to bring Karen to the US. The clinic
Speaker 2: charged another forty thousand dollars for the procedures Karen's agg retrieval,
Speaker 2: Paul's sperm collection, fertilizing the egg. Add in expenses for
Speaker 2: their own plane tickets, hormones for both Karen and Alys,
Speaker 2: several weeks of lodging, food, and a car. All in,
Speaker 2: the Kemptons had accumulated a debt of more than one
Speaker 2: hundred and seventy thousand dollar. Things had to go well.
Speaker 3: At the clinic, you have collection day, so that's go Karen,
Speaker 3: go Paul.
Speaker 2: And on Karen's side, things went extremely well. Fifty one
Speaker 2: eggs with paul sperm, nineteen became embryos, and then the
Speaker 2: kemptins waited for the results of their genetic testing to
Speaker 2: come in.
Speaker 4: It was one of the worst old eyes I remember having,
Speaker 4: because I could just distrain and agony of waiting.
Speaker 3: I was just punching through the motions, trying to enjoy myself,
Speaker 3: but just petrified. Each day, I'm like counting down the
Speaker 3: day until we actually knew.
Speaker 2: Alis and Paul were at the gym when they got
Speaker 2: the call.
Speaker 1: I was on the treadmill, and.
Speaker 6: The nurses are just so lovely, so they start off
Speaker 6: obviously very high, ellis how's your day, and then just wham,
Speaker 6: you know, I'm sorry to say none had survived to
Speaker 6: be viable, and I just I don't think I said anything.
Speaker 1: I went silent. I got off the treadmill, cried, went
Speaker 1: straight up to the room.
Speaker 3: And then I didn't leave my computer. I just went
Speaker 3: straight into you know, how did this happen?
Speaker 6: Mode?
Speaker 3: And I'm going to find out how, and I'm going
Speaker 3: to make someone accountable because we knew we'd never.
Speaker 1: Be able to do it again financially, Like you know.
Speaker 3: We knew from before we even while you're still positive,
Speaker 3: you're not talking about it because the thought that you
Speaker 3: have to do it again isn't there.
Speaker 1: But we both knew.
Speaker 4: We always knew America was our last chance. And I
Speaker 4: remember just needing to walk, go for walk by myself,
Speaker 4: giving our space and myself space. Like I just thought
Speaker 4: it was very devastating at that point, and we thought
Speaker 4: that was the end.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 2: One of the first things they did was let Karen
Speaker 2: know what had happened.
Speaker 1: I think her first words were, what can I do
Speaker 1: to help?
Speaker 3: She was very quick to say I will donate for free,
Speaker 3: like so quick, you know, it wasn't even me asking.
Speaker 1: She's like, well, I'll do it again.
Speaker 2: The donor agency ultimately got involved and wouldn't let Karen
Speaker 2: donate for free, but they did offer the Kemptons a
Speaker 2: twenty percent discount on the agency fee. The clinic's medical
Speaker 2: director said in an interview with Bloomberg, quote, we work
Speaker 2: with compromised sperm all the time. We thought it was
Speaker 2: a reasonable plan to move forward at the time, he
Speaker 2: wrote the Kemptons to let them know how disappointed their
Speaker 2: whole team was in the outcome, and the clinic offered
Speaker 2: them a second cycle with Karen's eggs for free. Even so,
Speaker 2: the Kemptons had to come up with more money for
Speaker 2: Karen's second retrieval. Their debt was now approaching two hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: We found out on New Year's Eve morning that we
Speaker 3: had four genetically beautiful embryos.
Speaker 2: And less than a year later, in late twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: the Kempton's son, Rupert, was born.
Speaker 6: It was.
Speaker 1: The best best day of my life.
Speaker 4: Like you know, it's just amazing to have fallen in
Speaker 4: love with someone that you love so much, to go
Speaker 4: through that heartache that we have over a number of years,
Speaker 4: and then to actually.
Speaker 1: Hold Rupert that to this day would be.
Speaker 4: The most happiest moment of my life. It's an amazing
Speaker 4: thrill in an amazing achievement.
Speaker 2: And in twenty twenty three, the Captains welcomed a daughter, Matilda.
Speaker 2: Both Matilda and her brother were born from the embryos
Speaker 2: created from Karen's second ag retrieval.
Speaker 3: I've always loved having friends and seeing their kids.
Speaker 1: And be like, oh that, that's a little bit of you, Like,
Speaker 1: I love looking at that.
Speaker 3: And so I definitely look at Rupert and Matilda and
Speaker 3: I'm like, where's Paul, Where's Karen, where's me?
Speaker 2: Alice says she sees all three of them and the kids.
Speaker 3: I'm headstrong. Yes, Matilda is headstrong. Karen might be headstrong Paul,
Speaker 3: but it's her tweak on it, you know. So we
Speaker 3: call Matilda Hurricane because she'll come in.
Speaker 1: And Paul Rupert is a very.
Speaker 3: Perfectionist, dedicated, He's a beautiful gentle. And then Matilda comes
Speaker 3: in and is says, I'm knocking that over, you know,
Speaker 3: here I come.
Speaker 2: In Australia, it's not uncommon for donor conceived people to
Speaker 2: know the identity of their donors. Several of the country
Speaker 2: states have passed legislation giving children the right to know
Speaker 2: their heritage, and Alis and Paul have embraced that culture
Speaker 2: with their kids. They have a world map up in
Speaker 2: their home, so Rupert and Matilda can see where Karen
Speaker 2: lives in Argentina and where the clinic is in Portland.
Speaker 2: And they've been open with the kids about how they
Speaker 2: were born.
Speaker 3: So we made a decision to make sure we had
Speaker 3: picture books from the get go, like age appropriate books
Speaker 3: as they go up and even it.
Speaker 1: Was important to us for that truthness.
Speaker 3: And also we're really proud of how much we love Karen,
Speaker 3: like we would not have our family without her.
Speaker 2: So in the end, the time, the heartbreak, the money,
Speaker 2: it all felt worth it, and the Camptons realize they're
Speaker 2: lucky they were able to pay for it all. How
Speaker 2: did you manage to find the money to fund this journey?
Speaker 4: I mean, over the course of our whole UF journey
Speaker 4: it would be half a mil and over a number
Speaker 4: of years.
Speaker 2: That's about half a million Australian dollars, which is just
Speaker 2: over three hundred thousand US dollars.
Speaker 4: And a lot of that has been our own savings,
Speaker 4: but we've had a fair chunk towards the end, which
Speaker 4: involved the America which we've had to borrow. And you know,
Speaker 4: rather see it as it as an upfront amount, you
Speaker 4: sort of look at it over the course of your
Speaker 4: whole life. I think you only live once and you
Speaker 4: only have one chance of having a family. And yes,
Speaker 4: it's a lot of money up front, but it's an
Speaker 4: investment in your future. It's an investment in Your Life.
Speaker 2: That was the third episode in The Human Egg Trade,
Speaker 2: our special series about the booming global market for human eggs.
Speaker 2: For more in depth reporting on how the human egg
Speaker 2: has become a precious resource traded around the world, read
Speaker 2: The Egg, an investigation by Bloomberg BusinessWeek and The Big Take.
Speaker 2: You can read The Egg on the Bloomberg terminal, Bloomberg
Speaker 2: dot com or in the January twenty twenty five issue
Speaker 2: of Bloomberg BusinessWeek. This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News.
Speaker 2: I'm Sarah Holder. This episode was produced by David Fox.
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