Embryo Donation Archives - Judith Hoechst | Colorado Reproductive Law

Texas couple who donated frozen embryos 20 years ago meets biological teen triplets

Judith Hoechst — Fri, 21 Oct 2022 15:46:48 +0000

Brooke and Chris Martin donated their eight remaining embryos almost 20 years ago following a successful IVF treatment that resulted in the birth of their twin boys

A Texas couple experienced an amazing moment when they were given the opportunity to meet the children who were born from their donated frozen embryos 20 years ago.

Brooke and Chris Martin explained their story in an exclusive interview with Fox 26 Houston on Wednesday.

Brooke said she and Chris faced infertility struggles in her late 20s and eventually resorted to in vitro fertilization (IVF) to get pregnant. The couple, who lived in Tennessee at the time, went to a fertility clinic in Nashville to start the process.

The Martins ended up with two implanted embryos, and their twin boys Matthew and Christopher were later born.

They still had eight frozen embryos remaining and had to decide what to do: use them, let them thaw out, donate them to science or give them back to the fertility clinic.

The couple chose the latter option because that’s what they believed was right, Brooke told Fox 26.

“We always had faith that when we donated, that they would be taken care of. The couple would have to go through the same thing that we did, which was agonizing. I mean, people don’t realize all that couples go through while dealing with this,” Chris explained to the Texas outlet.

Fast-forward almost 20 years later and the Martins were told by a family member that a boy, who could be their son, found them and reached out.

Fertility doctor is inundated with questions about coronavirus, egg freezing guidance: ‘A very bizarre time’

Judith Hoechst — Tue, 17 Mar 2020 03:02:51 +0000

A New York City fertility doctor says his office has been flooded with requests from women who want their eggs quickly harvested and frozen amidst coronavirus fears — and that he’s been called upon as a one-man information outlet, despite having no government guidance to draw upon regarding COVID-19 and fertility.

“The number one thing people are asking us for is guidance on what to do,” Brian Levine, MD, director of CCRM Fertility NY tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “And that, unfortunately, is the one thing we cannot offer them, as neither the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists (ACOG) has come out with a position statement” on fertility and the coronavirus.

“So, we are right now in a very bizarre time, where the only thing that we know what to say or do is ‘avoid the virus as much as possible,’” says Levine, who told the New York Post earlier this week he’s seen “at least a 25 percent increase in volume” of patients. Since that story broke on Thursday, he tells Yahoo Lifestyle, “we’ve seen even more patients and had more calling for feedback.”

The calls are coming with a sense of urgency, Levine explains, with many calling “and saying, ‘I want to be treated tomorrow, I want to freeze eggs or embryos as soon as possible.’ I’m happy to do phone consults, but what I’m finding I have to do is help educate people about the process: It takes two weeks to go through ovarian stimulation to the point of retrieving eggs. You can’t just walk in and get them aspirated or sucked out. It takes time to do a proper workup.”

But in their minds, he says, “they think they are getting coronavirus tomorrow, and want to get treated today.”

A small study conducted by the World Health Organization, published Friday, found that pregnant women are no more likely than others to have severe symptoms with coronavirus, although consequences to babies born to these moms are not yet known.

And while the CDC does not, in fact, offer specific guidance on COVID-19 and fertility, regarding pregnancy, it says, “We do not have information from published scientific reports about [the] susceptibility of pregnant women to COVID-19.” Also, it notes, “We do not have information on adverse pregnancy outcomes in pregnant women with COVID-19. Pregnancy loss, including miscarriage and stillbirth, has been observed in cases of infection with other related coronaviruses [SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV] during pregnancy. High fevers during the first trimester of pregnancy can increase the risk of certain birth defects.”

Further, the CDC website says, “Whether a pregnant woman with COVID-19 can transmit the virus that causes COVID-19 to her fetus or neonate by other routes of vertical transmission (before, during, or after delivery) is still unknown.” ACOG, meanwhile, refers to the CDC guidelines and also offers some guidance on infection prevention and control in obstetric care settings.

Along with potential new patients who have been calling Levine in a deluge, he says, have been established patients who have had a workup and “are calling with increased frequency, saying they were going to transfer embryo in April or May but want to do it earlier. I did not predict that one.” But in that case, Levine notes, “we’re happy to proceed. But the worst thing we can do is rush to treatment without knowing who the patient is or what they need.”

Not rushing in is a smart idea, says Suzanne Willard, clinical professor and associate dean for global health at the School of Nursing, Rutgers Global Health Institute. “Really? A run on fertility clinics? We really need to work with facts and check our emotions,” she tells Yahoo Lifestyle in an email regarding the increase in business at CCRM. “Emotions are driving much of this response, instead of listening to science. The scientists are working hard to understand this, and it is still a new phenomenon, and we don’t know everything now.”

When insurance covers IVF, more women use it

Judith Hoechst — Mon, 25 Nov 2019 01:56:09 +0000

(Reuters Health) – When insurance covers in vitro fertilization, more women struggling with infertility, especially those with limited financial resources, will use the method to improve their chances of having a baby, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that when the University of Michigan’s health insurance plan started covering IVF, use of the technology nearly tripled overall and increased by more than nine-fold among employees and dependents in lower-salary brackets, according to the report published in JAMA.

“It’s important to realize that infertility is a disease and unlike many other diseases, historically it has not been well covered by health insurance,” said study leader Dr. James Dupree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

“Infertility does not appear to discriminate based on how much money you have or what kind of job you have. But people are not using IVF in the same way,” Dupree said. “Insurance can help mitigate those disparities.”

Dupree and his colleagues hope their findings will spur decision-makers in state governments and at companies to decide IVF ought to be covered, “from an access to care equity perspective,” he said.

“As a urologist, I see the heartbreak, anguish and stress all the time,” Dupree said. “I tell people we have this great treatment that will allow you to have children with your DNA. Then they start asking how much it costs. When they say they can’t afford it, it’s heartbreaking.”

When the University of Michigan began to cover IVF in 2015, Dupree and his colleagues saw an opportunity to study how big of an impact insurance coverage might make.

The researchers pored over claims data from October 2012 to January 2017 for women aged 22 to 42. For the years 2015 through 2016, they were able to find information on IVF claims directly, unless women used clinics not affiliated with the university. For women who used a different clinic between 2015 and 2016 and women who might have had IVF before it was covered, the researchers needed to use surrogate measures to determine who had the procedure.

In those cases, “since we couldn’t look for a bill for IVF, we needed a different method,” Dupree said. “When women go through an IVF cycle they are given a very specific pattern of medications and they receive certain patterns of ultrasound, which were covered benefits that are visible in the paid claims.”

When the researchers compared IVF related claims from 2013-2014 to those from 2015-2016, they found use of IVF nearly tripled, rising from 34.3 per 10,000 women to 92.6 per 10,00 women.

When they looked at IVF use according to the insured employee’s salary, they found the biggest jump – more than nine-fold – in low-salary brackets, with rates rising from roughly 8 per 10,000 women to nearly 79 per 10,000 in the low-salary group.

Women in the high salary group also saw an increase in use, but it was smaller, more than doubling, rising from roughly 57 per 10,000 to roughly 132 per 10,000.

Fairness isn’t the only reason for insurance companies to start paying for IVF, said Dr. Mark Perloe, a reproductive endocrinologist at SGF Atlanta.

When women with infertility problems don’t have coverage for IVF, they are often resort to other means in their struggle to have a baby, Perloe said.

Among those methods is the use of drugs that stimulate the ovaries to produce more eggs in a given cycle. And that “dramatically increases the risk of multiple births,” Perloe said.

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Push in Germany for legalisation of surrogacy

Judith Hoechst — Fri, 20 Sep 2019 15:48:05 +0000

A German politician is pushing for a thorough-going revision of family law to allow altruistic surrogacy. Katrin Helling Plahr, of the Free Democrats (FDP), has released a seven-page position paper on liberalizing fertility treatment.

The current law in Germany, the Embryo Protection Act, was passed in 1990, when social mores were different. It bans all surrogacy.

FDP members of the European Parliament propose three main amendments to the law. They want full support for fertility treatments, regardless of the family model the applicants are in. They want to update artificial reproduction by permitting egg donation, embryo donation and non-commercial surrogacy.

They also want a family law that takes non-traditional family configurations into account and accepts a multiple parenting of up to four people.

The reasoning behind this flows from the legalisation of same-sex marriage. FDP members point out that marriages of two men may require two women to create the child. It is “constitutionally intolerable” for children to be “made differently, depending on whether they were born into same-sex or mixed-gender marriage”.

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6 Ways To Make Your Gestational Surrogacy Journey A Happy One

Judith Hoechst — Tue, 20 Aug 2019 01:56:30 +0000

The process of having a child through gestational surrogacy is long and complex, but one that can be happy and joyful. Gestational surrogacy is defined when the child is not biologically related to the woman carrying the pregnancy often referred to as the gestational carrier. In the case of gestational surrogacy the embryo is created via in vitro fertilization (IVF) using the sperm and eggs of the intended parents or donors, then transferred to the gestational carrier (GC). Gestational surrogacy is an increasingly common form of family-building, and one that allows individuals or couples to become parents despite circumstances where carrying a pregnancy might be impossible, either medically or biologically.

Gestational surrogacy is is a life event for all parties involved and should be both embraced and enjoyed.

Here are 6 ways to make your gestational surrogacy journey a happy one:

Utah Supreme Court says law banning same-sex couples from gestational agreements is unconstitutional

Judith Hoechst — Tue, 13 Aug 2019 17:43:55 +0000

SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Supreme Court has struck down a portion of law that banned same-sex couples from entering into gestational agreements to have children.

In a ruling on Thursday, Chief Justice Matthew Durrant said “same-sex couples must be afforded all of the benefits the State has linked to marriage and freely grants to opposite sex-couples.”

The case involved an unnamed gay couple from southern Utah who entered into a surrogacy agreement with a heterosexual couple. The four filed a joint petition in 5th District Court to validate the agreement. But the judge expressed concern about Utah law that explicitly stated it could only be if the “intended mother is unable to bear a child or is unable to do so without unreasonable risk to her physical or mental health or to the unborn child.”

The judge denied the couples’ petition, arguing that the law’s use of the words “mother and her plainly refer to a woman” and that because neither of the legally married intended parents were women, he had no choice. The couples appealed to the Utah Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of the law in light of marriage equality being granted nationwide in 2015.

In the case, the Utah Attorney General’s Office did not oppose the couples and, in fact, told the Court that the statute should be interpreted to be gender-neutral. But the legislature was explicit in its use of “mother,” “birth mother,” and “woman,” the Court said.

I’m Hiring A Gestational Carrier To Carry My Deceased Husband’s Embryos

Judith Hoechst — Fri, 09 Aug 2019 01:00:48 +0000

My husband, Dave, passed away unexpectedly at age 40 of cardiac issues. There were exactly zero symptoms and no warning signs, no foreshadowing of any sort.

It was a sunny, brisk, autumn Sunday. He and our son, Jude, played hide-and-seek, then Jude scampered upstairs in his little sock feet for a nap. As I read Dr. Seuss to him in preparation for a restful afternoon sleep, life and death collided.

An alarming loud noise came from downstairs. As I scrambled to assess the situation, our little boy sat upstairs, patiently obeying my call for him to remain in his room.

I administered CPR with intermittent pleas to Jude to stay. I ran frantically to a neighbor’s house. I called 911. It’s a blur to look back on, unimaginable moments that now seem to stretch into days. In reality, it was mere minutes.

The paramedics arrived, leading me out of the kitchen while they attempted to revive my husband. For 45 minutes, they tried everything. I was curious why no one was in a hurry to get to the hospital. No sirens, no lights… In hindsight, I see it clearly. They knew the end had come ― a truth with which I still have difficulty.

Designer Babies: Gene-Editing and the Controversial Use of CRISPR

Judith Hoechst — Wed, 10 Jul 2019 21:44:28 +0000

The concept of designer babes has been discussed a lot in recent months after a Chinese doctor claimed he helped create two babies with modified genes. This has sparked various debates on the ethics of genetic manipulation and the future of genetics.

The term ‘designer baby’ refers to a baby that has been given special traits through genetic engineering. This is done by altering the genes of the egg, sperm, or the embryo. These traits can, in theory, vary from lower resistance to diseases to even gender selection.