I froze embryos to have reproductive choice, but I nearly lost my reproductive autonomy
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Version 0 of 1. Eight years ago, I unthinkingly gave a man – who I loved at the time – the ultimate right to decide whether or not I would become a mother. I thought, and was encouraged to believe, that what I was doing was fair to him; what it became was a way for him to control the course of my life long after I’d decided he no longer deserved to be a part of it. In June 2007, my long-distance boyfriend decided to leave a teaching post in Korea six months early, travel around Southeast Asia for a bit and finally return to share to my Chicago bungalow. At the end of July – with him back in the states, but not by my side – a team of surgeons removed a golf-ball sized tumor from my back and I prepared to start aggressive chemotherapy treatment for extraosseous Ewing’s Sarcoma (a rare bone cancer that, in my case, was found in soft tissue) in August. At the age of 28, I suddenly had one month to decide whether and how best to preserve my ability to have children, assuming I survived the cancer. The chances of my eggs surviving the chemo were extremely rare; the doctors couldn’t say with certainty that I’d ever have a period again. Proven fertility options were limited at the time: the technology for freezing unfertilized eggs was nascent, and only a handful of children had been born using this method. Because I was in a committed relationship, and because I knew that I wanted to have children someday, fertilized embryos seemed like the best way to give me that option. A flurry of consultations with oncologists, fertility specialists, lawyers, social workers and psychologists ensued; what didn’t happen amidst that commotion was a frank conversation about the future of my relationship with my boyfriend. He agreed to let his sperm be used to create the embryos but, in retrospect, he didn’t once mention fatherhood or his excitement to co-parent with me even as I injected myself with hormones and prepared for another invasive medical procedure. Like most couples creating embryos, we signed a legal-binding contract giving us equal rights to the embryos; it also stipulated that, if either party wanted to use the embryos, both parties would need to agree. Though my boyfriend didn’t contribute financially to either the medical procedures or the legal process involved in obtaining the embryos – he was unemployed at the time – I felt that an equal agreement was the best way for us to proceed, both for the future of our relationship and out of a sense of fairness to him. My boyfriend’s utter lack of enthusiasm for the possibility of parenting, his lack of even a minimal financial investment in the process and my panicked call to my best friend the night before the egg retrieval should have been red flags for me. Instead, I allowed fertility specialists to retrieve my eggs as scheduled and eight fertilized embryos were preserved in the hope that, despite my cancer, I could one day give birth to a child. With the embryos safely packed away in frozen storage, I shifted my focus to my cancer treatment; my doctors’ course of treatment called for me to go through a full year of chemotherapy, and my life turned into a series of physically debilitating medical appointments and trying to get my strength back in time for the next one. My boyfriend was initially supportive – shuttling me to appointments and finding ways to keep me entertained in my hospital room – and I believed that we would beat my cancer together. But, whether because of my waning libido or his roaming nature, in December he cheated on me. Initially, I wanted to work through his betrayal: we had, after all, stayed together through four years and across four continents. But after two months of trying to fix what he had damaged, I realized that I needed to save my strength for my remaining eight months of chemo. I ended our relationship. After we broke up, I realized that, because of the contract we had signed, I had also lost my own power over my reproductive autonomy; to use those embryos, I’d now need the permission of someone with whom I was no longer in a relationship. I approached my ex soon after our break-up about the possibility of him simply granting me full legal rights to the embryos. He demurred, stating that he wanted to wait to make a decision until I finished chemo. Just before my final chemo treatment in September 2008, I again broached the subject of my embryos with my ex. Realizing the power that he still held over my reproductive rights, I treaded lightly. He held firm, and told me that he would gladly give me the right to use the embryos if I were partnered, but he would decide whether or not to allow me to parent if and when I wanted to go it alone. I felt powerless: beholden to a man who had betrayed me and who had – and could again – effortlessly bank sperm or conceive a child naturally with another woman. My embryos were likely my only opportunity to have biological children and, though I neither wanted nor needed his participation as a parent (financially or otherwise), he was still legally entitled to decide for me when or if I’d ever be a mother. In September 2008, I celebrated the end of my 17 cancer treatments with a crowd of friends and family, a bald head-shaped cake, lots of off-key karaoke – and without my ex. As I celebrated my strength and resilience in getting through the toxic treatments, I worried about the potential return of my fertility and my frozen embryos in legal limbo. Still, I postponed standing up to my ex: I was alive, I wasn’t yet 30 and I was enjoying my renewed health and energy, my return to work and going to graduate school. But, time passed and, as more and more friends were sharing birth announcements, my menstrual cycle failed to return. I finally decided that I was no longer willing to leave my reproductive choices up to an ex with no investment in my life or my future. I approached him again the following summer; but this time, I didn’t ask him to reconsider his decision to retain his legal rights or to ask his permission to have a baby. Instead, as he was so committed to retaining his right to my embryos, I asked him to pay his share of the $400 annual storage fees for them. That got his attention – and, ultimately, a modification of the co-parent agreement. The modification gave me sole responsibility for the embryos and absolved my ex of control, financial responsibility and any rights to any child born from my frozen embryos. Regaining power over my ability to decide to have children was a huge victory for me – but it need not have been. It’s seemingly become standard for couples to agree to equal rights over their embryos and, as Sofia Vergara’s ex demonstrated in the pages of the New York Times, it’s increasingly common for those equal rights to be wielded as a weapon of control, particularly against women. Had I been asked to think through both what seemed fair to him and what that fairness might cost me, I might’ve had one less thing to worry about while trying to save my own life. |