The New York Times wrote about egg donation and included The Cost of Life in this Oct. 21, 2016, piece.
“Justine Griffin submitted an application to donate her eggs to a fertility clinic in Florida, detailing everything about herself from her appearance to her SAT scores. An infertile couple liked what they saw on paper and Ms. Griffin was notified that they wanted to buy her eggs.”
Knight Science Journalism at MIT operates the KSJ Tracker, which featured a blurb about The Cost of Life on June 24, 2014.
The review was written by Paul Raeborn, a media critic.
The Cost of Life is well worth your time. If it had run in the New York Times, it would be news across the country now, and we would be seeing Griffin interviewed by Charlie Rose. In the media capital here in New York City, where we’re accustomed to thinking that we know everything, it’s important to be reminded that good journalism can be done anywhere.”
Read the full review here.
The Cost of Life ran excerpts in the following publications:
The Cost of Life: My experience as a first-time egg donor ran an as an excerpt on the Huffington Post Women page on June 5, 2014.
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An original excerpt published in The Riverter Magazine on April 18, 2014.
Editor and founder of The Riveter, Kaylen Ralph, published a Q&A with Justine Griffin the week prior to the excerpt.
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We Are Egg Donors, an egg donor activist and resources group, published a Q&A with Justine Griffin on May 21, 2014.
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The Gainesville Sun and the Ocala Star-Banner, both Halifax Media Group-owned newspapers, published 900-word excerpts of The Cost of Life on Sunday, May 25.
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Longreads featured The Cost of Life on its website in June.
Slate.com’s Double X Podcast mentioned The Cost of Life and linked to the story in a July 10 episode.
The Washington Post pulled quotes and reporting from The Cost of Life in a July 21 Storyline piece.
Medium featured The Cost of Life in this June 5 piece about the fertility industry and again in this Jan. 17 piece about the pursuit of pregnancy.
Wired Magazine mentioned The Cost of Life in this Oct. 24 piece about egg freezing.
Paste Magazine included The Cost of Life on a list of the best short read pieces in January.
The Crow’s Nest (USF student publication) wrote about The Cost of Life on Nov. 15, 2015.
Photo by Elaine Litherland
Kelly Mcbride from the Poynter Institute of Media Studies interviewed Justine Griffin about her project, The Cost of Life. The interview focused on the ethical issues that surrounded the project. “As her approach morphed from a personal essay to an investigative package, Griffin had to deal with her own conflict of interest. She was part of the story.“
Huff Post Live interviewed Justine Griffin about The cost of Life on Friday, June 5, 2014, as apart of the “What’s Trending” segment.
On June 10, Huff Post Live held a follow up discussion with Raquel Cool, from We Are Egg Donors, to discuss regulatory issues in egg donation.
The Sarasota News Network interviewed Justine Griffin about The Cost of Life on Friday, May 23, prior to the story publishing that Sunday.
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Justine Griffin was interviewed by Steve Newborn of WUSF, the Tampa NPR radio affiliate, on June 5, 2014.
Justine Griffin was featured on Maternally Yours, a radio show about fertility, during a segment on egg donation.
Inspired to act by childhood loss, a young reporter became an egg donor. In this way, she helped a couple have a baby. She also learned tough lessons about a donor’s worth once her contract is fulfilled.
I have always been the wimp in my family, the first to cry or complain at any sign of pain or discomfort.
My parents and younger brother have taken great pleasure in reenacting all my greatest “near-death” experiences and illnesses at the dinner table over the years. Like the time I fell off the back of a golf cart and was convinced I’d broken my collar bone. (I didn’t.)
Or the time I thought I had meningitis. (It was just a cold.)
So the idea of donating eggs – injecting myself with hormones and undergoing an invasive surgery, all for someone else to have a baby — seemed a little far-fetched to my family.
A couple who lived half a world away plucked me out of an online library of hundreds of women who were willing to donate their sex cells to strangers. Each of us had been broken down by our general attributes. My specifications, a fertility agency would later tell me, were desirable: 25 years old, green eyes, 5-feet, 10-inches tall, blond hair, a 3.6 university grade point average and a burgeoning new career.
Those same specifications are what make my parents beam with pride.
One night last summer at my parent’s dinner table, I told my mom and dad that I wanted to help somebody have a baby. The usual lively suppertime conversation and laughter died down, and my parents lost their appetites. They didn’t want to joke about that time I drove my brother’s four-wheeler into a tree anymore.
I told them I am like the thousands of other women — the daughters, sisters, girlfriends or wives at someone else’s dinner table — who donate their eggs to couples who cannot conceive a child on their own.
With an estimated 7.3 million people experiencing infertility in the United States, or one out of eight couples, the demand for young women like me who voluntarily undergo hormone drug treatment and egg retrieval surgery is high. And with the average compensation for this kind of donation at about $5,000 in Florida, the allure of this relatively new medical procedure is attracting more and more young women, despite the many unknowns.
The eggs in my ovaries made me valuable. Without them, there is no in vitro fertilization, no surrogate mothers, no baby making business. As it unfolded, I began to feel like a commodity rather than a human being, a means to an end on the infant assembly line.