The Exes Who Froze Embryos and Regret It

When she was 29, Jennifer and her boyfriend of two years weren’t ready to get married. So he proposed an alternative: freezing embryos together to cement their bond. They would split the $20,000 cost. “It was a symbol of how committed he was to me,” Jennifer thought. She said “yes.”

For Jennifer, the trouble started shortly before her first shot of high-dose ovary-stimulating hormones when her boyfriend confessed he had cheated on her on multiple occasions. Now five months deep into planning, Jennifer felt trapped and manipulated, especially since he’d brought up the idea of merging genes while hiding his infidelity.

She wasn’t sure she wanted to break up, but “if I had said ‘no’ to embryos at that point, it was a symbol that our relationship was dead.” Jennifer went ahead with the procedure and used half of her retrieved eggs to create and freeze 20 embryos. Two years later, when Jennifer pushed for a proposal, her boyfriend dumped her: “He decided he didn’t want me to be the mother of his children.” Jennifer was devastated. “I’m going through the seven stages of grief,” she told me eight months later. “Not about him but about my embryos.” Her ex offered that he’d be open to letting her use their embryos in the future, a suggestion Jennifer found offensive. For now, they’re frozen with Jennifer’s eggs; eventually she and her ex plan to have them destroyed.

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