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What Should I Do with My Unused Embryos? [1]

['Anna Hecker']

Date: 2020-04-15  

This story was originally published on Nov. 22, 2019 in NYT Parenting.

In the bowels of Midtown Manhattan, a trio of embryos sit in a vat of liquid nitrogen. They’re the genetic siblings of my sons, Jack and Charlie, the frozen fruits of an I.V.F. cycle completed in 2016 — and I have no clue what to do with them.

These embryos — created from my eggs, my husband’s sperm and a lot of our money — represent a tiny fraction of the estimated 620,000 cryopreserved embryos in the United States, according to the Health and Human Services Department. Many will be implanted in the hope of making more babies. But some remain stuck in limbo, dependent on people who are done building their families and now have an agonizing decision to make.

For those like me who are definitely done reproducing (two kids is plenty for us, thanks), there are three options: preserve, discard or donate. “If there’s any chance they would want them in the future, it’s better to hold onto them,” says Dr. Briana Rudick, the director of Columbia University Fertility Center’s Third-Party Reproduction Program, of a patient’s option for long-term preservation. “You don’t ever know what life is going to bring you.” Some of her patients have donated embryos to friends — or returned for them after the loss of a child. (Cryopreserved embryos seem to be viable for decades. In 2017, a healthy baby girl was born from an embryo that had been frozen for 24 years.)

[Learn more about I.V.F. and how to bring down the cost of treatment.]

Another option is to thaw and discard them. Some patients find relief and closure this way, but I’m not sure I can bring myself to destroy our hard-won embryos. “Discarding seems so wasteful, when there are so many people who are in such need,” says Dr. Craig R. Sweet, the medical director of Specialists in Reproductive Medicine and Surgery in Fort Myers, Fla., and the founder of Embryo Donation International, one of a small handful of non-faith-based and full-service embryo-donation programs in the United States.

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[1] Url: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/parenting/fertility/ivf-unused-frozen-eggs.html

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