In the early 1980s, Renee Ballou and her husband had a stable California life but wanted a second child. After years of infertility, she underwent extensive medical treatments including doctor visits, injections, and surgery, but the procedures repeatedly failed. In 1987 she stopped trying. Later, her life became more difficult due to divorce and her mother’s death. In 1995, a reporter contacted her after the FBI obtained a list of patients whose eggs had been stolen by fertility clinic doctors. Ballou learned that her eggs had been placed into another person’s body, resulting in a son she did not know and had never met. She realized she was not the only affected patient.
"In the early 1980s, Renée Ballou and her husband had all the trappings of a perfect California life. Ballou was a sales manager for a carpet mill. Her husband owned his own business. They had a son, a happy little boy who loved soccer. But for Ballou, something was missing."
"Ballou started infertility treatments: dozens of trips to the doctor, daily injections, even surgery. She got her hopes up, only to be let down every time the procedures didn't work. Finally, in 1987, she gave up."
"The journalist was calling about the fertility clinic where Ballou and her ex-husband had sought treatment almost a decade earlier. The FBI had obtained a list of patients whose eggs had been stolen by those doctors. Ballou's name was on it. Someone had put her eggs into the body of a stranger, and that stranger had given birth to a son."
"Ballou was shocked to learn that she had a genetic child living who knows where, being raised by people she'd never met. And she wasn't alone. As"
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