Eve Wiley, originally from a small rural town in East, Texas, uncovered a life changing family secret about her genetic identity. Becoming a modern day Erin Brockovich, she found purpose for her pain by single handedly lobbying for a fertility fraud bill that passed the Texas House and Senate unanimously and exposed the dark side of the grossly unregulated fertility industry. Eve’s story, documented by ABC’s 20/20, thrust her into an advocacy role for donor conceived rights and women’s reproductive rights. As a licensed professional counselor, she is passionate about the mental health implications of genetic identity family secrets that commercial DNA testing is revealing.

Tune in as Eve chats with Ellen and Jennifer about:

-When and how she found out she was donor conceived (yes…this included snooping through her mother’s email ya’ll)

-How the confrontation with her mother went after she found out she was donor conceived

-Finding Steve, who she thought was her biological father and how she reached out to him

-Their first meeting and how their relationship progressed — including her mom first meeting Steve!

-What it was like meeting Steve’s “social children” and his wife

-How she found her two half-brothers and how this ended up with her telling one of them he was donor-conceived

-Finding out Steve was not indeed her biological father but rather her mother’s doctor was

-The draft of the letter she wrote to her mother’s doctor that explained how he was her biological father and his smoke and mirrors response

-What she did in response to this gigantic debacle — like helping to create a law to stop other doctors doing this in the future — yeah NBD

-Her advice to other donor conceived offspring

And don’t go away because we have a bonus episode. Steven Scholl is an independent scholar of Islam and comparative religion. He has lived and traveled extensively in the Middle East after doing his graduate studies in Islamic philosophy and history at McGill University. Steve is the founding publisher of White Cloud Press and is the editor of several books including "The Peace Bible:  Words from the Great Traditions" and "Common Era: Best New Writings on Religion." He writes on religion and culture for newspapers and magazines and is a contributor to the "Encyclopedia of Religion" (ed. by Mircea Eliade). His new book is “Muhammad,” co-written with Sam Deeb.

Steve, the person Eve believed was her father, chimes in with his side of the story and discusses:

-How he got into sperm donation — it involved a poster on a pole — yep…a side hustle for pocket cash

-Whether he thought through the ramifications of donating sperm — hint…nope

-His thoughts 13 years later when he got the phone call from the sperm bank asking him to update his records and then the email that he got that Eve was looking for him

-How his wife did a 180 regarding his relationship with Eve, his thought-to-be donor conceived daughter

-How his children responded when they found out about Eve

-His feelings when Eve called to say he wasn’t her dad after all

-Whether he has a relationship with his other donor-conceived children

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