If you want to see me at my most earnest and tender,
I highly recommend joining me for a run. I took up the sport 10 years ago this year and have experienced thrilling highs, humbling lows, seen the world (literally—I have run everywhere from Tokyo to Thessaloniki) and learned valuable life lessons thanks to the act of consistently lacing up and putting one foot in front of the other.
When it comes to women’s sports, we’re in a historic moment. And so, there was only one cover star choice
for our Women In Sports issue: A’ja Wilson, the supernova center for the Las Vegas Aces who is leading the WNBA to new heights. She’s a two-time champion, two-time MVP, and two-time Olympian, but it’s the changes she’s pushing for off the court—like speaking out against the gender pay gap—that strike me as most impressive. “When people ask me what I do and why, it’s like I’m
not just living for myself, but for generations before me,” she tells cover story writer and Marie Claire executive editor, Andrea Stanley.
While Wilson may be in her prime at 27, the roster of remarkable women we feature in “The Rise of the Middle-Age Athlete,” prove that middle-age may actually be the best years for competing. Their stories are inspiring examples of how life doesn’t have to stop as we get older.
Elsewhere in the issue you’ll learn about those who are making a difference from the sidelines—the female investors who are buying up pro sports teams (“These Women Own Sports") and the stylists turning the tunnel walk into a fashion show (“The Stylists Turning the Tunnel Walk Into a Fashion Show”).
Lastly, we’re launching a new column called
Exit Interview where we’ll have candid conversations with people who just left their job. To kick it off, I spoke with professional athlete Alexi Pappas who has found freedom in no longer “trying to define” where her career is headed. And in the story “From Syrian Refugee to Two-Time Olympian,” swimmer Yusra Mardini opens up about the power of sports, and how watching the human body defy what’s possible, shows us all that we’re capable of something truly great.
Years later, as she was finishing up high school, she still had motherhood on her mind.
“I knew that I wanted to be a mom, and my parents were like, ‘No, you need to find a degree in something you can actually have a job in,’” Andrea, now 33, says, laughing at the memory while on a video call from her Alabama home on a Monday afternoon in December.
Andrea enrolled in nursing school at Freed-Hardeman University, a small Christian college in West Tennessee. There, as a freshman, she met and started dating junior and student body president Nicholas Darby. In July 2013, two months after she graduated college, they got married and she joined Nicholas in Alabama where he was in medical school studying to become a family medicine doctor. About a year later, Andrea stopped taking birth control. A year after that, she still wasn’t pregnant. The couple decided to do some tests and eventually discovered that Nicholas was infertile.
They considered their options: advanced testicular mapping and IVF, sperm donation, or adoption, but they decided to hold off. They had hesitations about IVF, Andrea says, because they believe embryos are life from the moment a sperm is fused with an egg and would never feel comfortable discarding them; something they feel devalues the sanctity of life. They also have significant reservations about genetic testing.
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ven before she could read, Andrea Darby knew she wanted to be a mother. In kindergarten, she’d gone to her Tennessee elementary school dressed up as a mom for career day, with a robe on, her light brown hair in curlers, holding a baby doll.
(Photo credit: Getty Images)
“We’re members of the Church of Christ and we thought, God has a plan,” says Andrea, in her light Tennessee twang. Her father is a minister and Nicholas’s dad is an elder at their church. Their shared commitment to their faith is part of what drew them to each other. “We don't want to just try to make everything fit the way we want it to.”
They held off on making any decisions about their future family. Andrea remembers Nicholas telling her, ‘I think this must mean God doesn’t want us to have children at all.’
Andrea didn’t agree. It was a rare moment where a spiritual challenge sent them to opposite conclusions. But she knew they had to be on the same page, so for months, Andrea prayed to God asking, Please work on my husband’s heart.
During that time, while researching infertility online, Andrea came across an article discussing embryo donation. Embryos are fertilized eggs and patients undergoing IVF often freeze and store their extra embryos following their procedures. Multiple embryos are created because it often takes multiple transfers to result in a live birth. People can store their extra embryos—paying an annual fee in case they want to use them to get pregnant later—discard them, or donate them to science education.
Embryo donation is another option. People seek out embryo donation for many reasons; some are unable to create biological embryos of their own or lack the financial resources to undergo a full cycle of IVF. Others do so because they feel like they’re saving the lives of “frozen children.”
For those, like Andrea, who firmly believe life begins at conception, these embryos are known as “snowflake babies,” a term coined by Nightlight Christian Adoptions. The name of their embryo matching service, Snowflakes, refers to the way that embryos are frozen in order to be stored and how each embryo is “unique,” like a snowflake. Conservative organizations, like Nightlight, also use language that implies embryos are living people; often referred to as fetal personhood, a movement which many believe has dangerous implications for women’s rights.
Once Andrea discovered the concept of embryo donation, she felt like she’d found her life’s calling. “These are lives that exist already and they just need an opportunity,” she remembers thinking. This could not only help her get pregnant, in her mind, it would also allow her to save those destined to “be in a freezer forever.”
With tears in her eyes, she adds, “These are children that are there waiting, and all they need is someone to give them a chance.”
(Photo credit: Getty Images)
(Photo credit: Getty Images)
[They] say, ‘We heard about the plight of these million and a half frozen embryos in the United States and we want
to be part of the solution, rather than be part of the problem.’ For a number of people, it’s a rescue mission.
husband, he said this was no time to have a child, but they would manage, somehow. They had fled their home in Gaza City when Israel declared war on Hamas, the militant group that controlled Gaza and which had launched a surprise attack on Israel last October, killing some 1,200 people. An Israeli rocket tore through the Abeds’ apartment building soon after. Abed, her husband, and three-year-old son took refuge with extended family in central Gaza, with 19 people sharing one apartment. She prayed the war would end before she gave birth.
For months, Abed, 29, could not find a doctor or midwife for her prenatal appointments because so many hospitals in Gaza were bombed out or closed. So she turned to her mother for advice; she fretted that she wasn’t getting the prenatal vitamins or nutrition she needed. The family lived on canned beans and the occasional vegetable. There was no fruit, meat, or fish. She fainted multiple times due to the poor diet and vomited from contaminated water.
Anytime Abed imagined her baby’s future, she panicked, worrying about what would happen if she couldn’t breastfeed and formula wasn’t available, or if she was killed and her baby orphaned, as by the spring 19,000 children would be. Her young son had lived through multiple conflicts with Israel, but “these were like escalations, they were not wars,” she said. “I just don’t want to see my baby suffering the way people are suffering here.” She dreamed of giving birth in peacetime, when she could provide her child with mangos, cucumbers, and bananas.
By summer, the death toll of the war was staggering; the medical journal The Lancet estimating that in July 2024 between seven and nine percent of the population of the Gaza Strip had been wiped out. Some half of all deaths were women and children.
husband, he said this was no time to have a child, but they would manage, somehow. They had fled their home in Gaza City when Israel dn of the Gaza Strip had been wiped out. Some half of all deaths were women and children.
(Photo credit: Shutterstock)
To get to Gaza, Al-Nashef traveled from Canada to Jordan to the Karam Abu Salem border crossing between Israel and Gaza. She went as part of a United Nations delegation, with support from the medical supplies company Glia, taking leave from her various jobs, including her clinical practice and administrative position as the assistant head of midwifery at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver.
Driving into Gaza in June, Al-Nashef said, the scene was “apocalyptic.” She passed entire towns of gray rubble with no one on the streets, “empty and all destroyed, like a game with zombies.” Finally, Al-Nashef arrived at Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza, where ambulances with the wounded regularly pulled up and where she’d be assisting as a midwife in labor and delivery.
When we spoke over WhatsApp during her first week in Gaza, the lights went out behind Al-Nashef in the dorm where she was staying before a generator kicked in. Her voice was hoarse, her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. Like Alreqeb, she said the shortage of supplies was a major issue for their maternity staff. They didn’t have the right sutures for women sometimes, or enough CPAP machines for respiratory support, or safe umbilical cord clamps for the babies. Some midwives were using the lace of a mask, soaked in alcohol, to wrap around the umbilical cord to stop it from bleeding.
“A woman welcoming a baby
to this world is supposed to
be a gentle experience,”
Al-Nashef said. In Gaza, it is dangerous and chaotic.
THE MOMS ON
They believe embryos are lives waiting to be rescued. And they’ll do whatever it takes to do just that.
BY LORENA O'NEIL
A MISSION TO
SAVE “FROZEN
“But embryo donation really has grown as a family building option significantly in the last ten years.”
In fact, from 2004 to 2019, the annual number of donated embryo transfers has more than tripled. Reproductive health experts say this is for a variety of reasons: knowledge about the procedure has increased, traditional adoption availability has decreased, embryo donation is cheaper than IVF or egg donation and thus much more accessible. The cost of embryo donation varies depending on whether or not you use a standalone matching service, go to a full-service facility, or are taking over the cost of storage and paying for an embryo transfer. A full-service process generally costs between $10,000 and $14,000. On the other hand, IVF can cost as much as $30,000 for one transfer, with most people needing multiple transfers. The number of people seeking to expand their families, including single women and LGBTQ+ couples, has also increased, with some turning to embryo donation programs.
“You have international adoption really folding,” says Denise Seidelman, an attorney who has worked in adoption and reproductive law for nearly 28 years. “You have the number of newborn children being placed for adoption dramatically declining, and with same-sex marriage and parenting being so much more prevalent today, the number of people seeking children has dramatically expanded. Embryo donation really does open up a world for people—it’s a game-changer.”
But it’s impossible to fully understand the complex world of embryo donation without taking into account the current socio-political world it exists in. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs decision, reproductive health has taken center stage in politics and public conversation. As abortion rights activists have predicted for years, this conversation has affected far more than just abortion.
“More and more states are passing fetal personhood laws and expanding it in ways that are pretty unimaginable,” says Seidelman. Fetal personhood is the idea that fetuses and embryos should have the same legal rights as people. Pregnancy Justice’s September 2024 report found that 17 states have fetal personhood laws.
While some proposed “personhood” laws specifically target fetuses and exclude embryos, this is also changing. Earlier this year the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos could be considered children, and anybody who destroyed the frozen embryos—either intentionally or accidentally—could be subject to a wrongful death suit, sparking a nationwide debate about IVF, which is overwhelmingly supported by the public at large; both Democrats and Republicans. The court ruling caused several Alabama clinics to temporarily halt IVF treatments, and created a precedent that added fuel to the fire for those seeking to claim fetal personhood rights for embryos. This emboldened the far-right to come out with their objections to IVF, which some Christian opponents feel is a science that is akin to playing God. This summer, the Southern Baptist Church approved a resolution criticizing IVF practices, but they recommended that members consider “adopting frozen embryos.”
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mbryo donation isn’t new, but it is gaining in popularity. “It has been a part of IVF since we first started making embryos,” says Andrea Braverman, a clinical professor of OB-GYN and psychiatry at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.
If embryos are treated the same as living people, this could fundamentally affect not only fertility care, but how pregnant people are treated. The question can become whose “right to life” takes precedence, the fetus’s or the mother’s? It opens the door to increased pregnancy criminalization, such as arresting mothers for doing anything that could be considered endangering the fetus and leads to a dangerous path of empowering people to police women’s bodies and what they do while pregnant. Of course, this ties in to restrictions on bodily autonomy and abortion as well.
Which makes the language we use around embryo donation increasingly important. As we’ve seen with Dobbs, the way we talk about reproductive health—or in some cases, don’t talk about it—can have an outsized effect on how words make their way into our legal system and become law.
In faith-based organizations, in addition to being described as a “rescue mission,” embryo donation is often referred to as “embryo adoption,” although the American Society for Reproductive Medicine recommends avoiding the usage of that term. “Embryos have the potential to become persons, but they should not be afforded the same legal status as a person,” a 2023 opinion by ASRM stated. The opinion states the term “adoption” is “inaccurate and misleading” and “could place unintended legal and procedural burdens on both recipients and donors.” Legally, embryo donation is not considered adoption. In most states, it’s considered a transfer of property.
Embryo Donation International medical director, Craig Sweet, M.D., points out full-service facilities are regulated by the FDA because they are medical facilities—not adoption agencies. EDI is one of a handful of full-service, free-standing facilities that both match embryos and perform the embryo transfer procedure. The total cost for the patient ranges from $10,000 and $12,000 and they intentionally do not charge a matching fee. They accept applicants regardless of their sexual orientation or marriage status, and are open to gestational surrogates.
“We treat the process as a medical procedure, which is performed on-site,” says Dr. Sweet. He says that while about 10 to 15 percent of their applicants might be in the “save the embryos” crowd, the majority have had significant reproductive health challenges.
Like Lisa Jones, a 47-year-old single woman. After multiple miscarriages and unsuccessful attempts at ICI (intracervical insemination) using donor sperm, she turned to embryo donation when Dr. Sweet suggested she try using eggs from a younger woman. Jones had taken on a second job to afford ICI treatments and embryo donation, which was more financially affordable, although she ended up waiting a little over a year to be matched. “Some donors at the bottom of their profiles write comments like, ‘We understand what it’s like to want to be a parent and struggle, so we’re giving this gift to others,’” she says, her eyes wet with tears. She gave birth to her daughter, Lily, last year.
of options. Braverman also directs patients to national self-matching websites, like Empower with Moxi, that help recipients and donors with similar desires and goals find each other.
But their presence belies the strong foothold of faith-based organizations operating in the space. When organizations put religion at the root of family planning, it not only shapes conversations around how embryo donation is viewed, but for what purpose embryo donation is used, and who is able to use it.
National Embryo Donation Center (NEDC) is a Christian organization that’s also one of the biggest full-service embryo donation services. “Embryo adoption is a wonderful way to honor God’s tiniest image-bearers,” text on the website reads. Among the requirements of the donor recipients is that they are a couple who have been married for at least three years. NEDC doesn’t accept single parents and they require it to be a heterosexual marriage.
President Jeffrey Keenan, M.D., says couples come to NEDC for many reasons, including fertility struggles, issues with genetic diseases, or failed attempts at traditional adoption. “Others say, ‘We heard about the plight of these million and a half frozen embryos in the United States and we want to be part of the solution, rather than be part of a problem.’ For a number of people, it’s a rescue mission.”
Snowflakes executive director Beth Button says that while they assist those regardless of their sexual orientation or marital status, they tend to attract Christian adopters and donors, so if they feel like a family will be harder to match (donors can stipulate who can receive their embryos), they sometimes refer them to another agency.
Eight-five to ninety percent of the recipients Button works with have experienced or are experiencing infertility, but she says there is also a percentage who do not struggle with infertility but believe in saving embryos. “We do have those who might already have biological children, or have adopted domestically or internationally and just see a need for these embryos to have a chance to be born, so they apply,” says Button.
That was the case for Kaity and Nic Ford, who live in rural Colorado and have four biological children, ranging from ages 8 to 15. The couple met at “cowboy church,” a Bible-based church full of “cowboys, ranchers, and bikers” as Kaity puts it. Nic is a pipeline manager at an oil field, and his family is in the rodeo.
Kaity, 35, and Nic, 41, were introduced to embryo donation when initially working with Nightlight on adopting a baby daughter they were fostering. After their foster daughter was reunited with her birth family, Kaity and Nic had already renovated the house for another child and set their mind on adoption.
“We really wanted to help kids that aren’t getting adopted,” says Kaity on a video call in early November, framed black and white photos of her children going up the staircase behind her. She remembers the adoption caseworker asking her, “Have you ever considered embryo adoption instead?”
Kaity says the caseworker explained what the process was, and that often people who are looking into traditional adoption can’t biologically get pregnant, but since Kaity could, she could give these embryos a chance at life. They went ahead with the matching process and gave birth to baby Urijah in July 2022. Now two, Urijah crawls into Nic’s lap as we talk, smiling and waving.
There are people in their cowboy church community who aren’t comfortable with IVF, and Nic says he often has to explain what embryo donation is, emphasizing that they weren’t responsible for initially creating the embryos. “Some people think the science side of it is a little screwy so they question it, “says Nic. “And then you explain, no these are already lives that are put together and we’re giving them an opportunity to have life.” As he speaks, Kaity pats at her stomach. She’s currently five months pregnant with Urijah’s genetic sibling, a baby boy due in May.
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ocal IVF clinics also offer donated embryo transfers, and some have a waiting list of people looking to receive or donate. The process for clinics is usually more transactional, and is less focused on matching people’s values or offering a large selection
for her, but that it ended up being a comfort knowing that the physicians she was working with had the same value system she did.
Andrea describes going to Knoxville for bloodwork and a physical exam in order to get medically cleared that she could carry an embryo. She went through the state of Alabama to have a licensed social worker come to perform a home study for adopting parents, which NEDC requires.
Andrea remembers being overwhelmed by all of the paperwork she needed to gather for the home study: an extensive questionnaire, financial documents, pay stubs, six personal references, and local police department background checks. Both Andrea and Nicholas had to write full biographies about themselves and talk about who would get their (at the time theoretical) child in the event of their death. Someone visited her home to go through a checklist of safety requirements.
Three months after they visited NEDC and started the home study process, the matching process began. In January 2019, Andrea and Nicholas specifically looked at profiles with embryos that had been frozen for a long time and might not be as likely to get selected by those looking to start a family. “We wanted to fulfill a need outside of our own needs,” says Andrea.
The profiles described the donors' ages, race, and occupations along with physical characteristics like hair, eye, color, height, occupation. Then once Andrea and Nicholas narrowed their selection, they were sent full profiles with more details, including health history and lifestyle information like hobbies and interests.
They chose two embryos from one family that had been frozen for 23 years and eight embryos that had been frozen for 10 to 12 years by a couple who were a doctor and a nurse, like Nicholas and Andrea. Andrea says not only did the second couple have their same jobs, one of them also loved The Lord of the Rings, which was a favorite film of hers.
Andrea and Nicholas only wanted to take the amount of embryos they would eventually implant, and by selecting ten, they knew that could mean a very big family. “With my husband’s job, we had the financial resources to have however many kids God decided to give us,” says Andrea. “We knew from the beginning, when we adopted the embryos, we were making a commitment to those embryos’ lives.”
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fter they decided to proceed with embryo donation, Andrea and Nicholas used NEDC. The couple were living in Birmingham in 2018 and NEDC was nearby in Knoxville, Tennessee. Andrea said the fact that it was faith-based was not a requirement
pregnancy, and knew that she was not going to get pregnant again. Their fertility clinic told them they could destroy them, donate them to science, or keep them frozen in storage.
“We didn’t like any of those options because we wanted to give them a chance at life, we just knew I couldn’t have them,” Tabatha said in a video interview, Udo at her side. The couple met in the military and have been married for 19 years.
A year after their twins were born, Tabatha’s mother overheard the Christian right radio host James Dobson talking about embryo donation and “snowflake babies” on his show, Focus on the Family. She eagerly passed the message on to her daughter, who was initially conflicted about the idea.
“It was such a new concept, it’s purely our DNA being transferred to someone else,” says Udo. “But the more we thought and prayed about it the more we became comfortable with it and thought how another family might be going through the same struggles and maybe even IVF wouldn’t work for them, this would give them an opportunity to have a full family.”
The couple connected to NEDC to begin the process and felt a connection to the family in the first application packet they opened, which was a man and woman without any children. The receiving family loved Jesus and served in the church, which were both extremely important for Tabatha and Udo. And there were smaller connections too, Tabatha and the future mother both loved cheese and played the saxophone. They would later find out that both of their mothers heard the same Focus on the Family embryo donation story, which led them to NEDC. “Tell me that’s not God!” Tabatha says when recounting the story.
The receiving couple implanted all four embryos, ending up with a girl and a boy two years apart. The families opted for an open donation, and they all reunite once a year. When they get together they often have conversations about nature versus nurture, and Tabatha says she feels like an aunt to the kids, who are jokesters just like her and Udo. “It’s just really cool that they know that they were so loved that we wanted to give them a chance at life. They look exactly like Tabatha,” says Udo, smiling. “Super blonde, super blue-eyed, they’re beautiful.”
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n 2010, after undergoing IVF, Tabatha and Udo Mohr were conflicted about what to do with their embryos. The South Carolina couple had four remaining embryos after Tabatha gave birth to twins—a boy and a girl. She had complications during her
Project 2025’s proposed agenda.
Project 2025’s Health and Human Services section touches on fetal personhood, urging the future presidential administration to “protect the fundamental right to life” and adding, “From the moment of conception, every human being possesses inherent dignity and worth, and our humanity does not depend on our age, stage of development, race, or abilities.”
IVF in general is still largely supported by the American public, and efforts in other countries like Italy to heavily regulate who can access assisted reproductive technology has created backlash and led to decreased restrictions. But in a post-Dobbs world, reproductive rights can shift in an instant and health advocates and lawyers continue to keep a close eye on the world of embryo donation, especially at the intersection of religion and the fetal personhood movement.
For Andrea and Nicholas, the choice was clear. In March 2019, Andrea had three embryos implanted, resulting in a chemical pregnancy. A few months later, in July, the couple was overjoyed when they successfully transferred an embryo that had been frozen for 12 years. Andrea gave birth to Vivian in April 2020, just as the pandemic was raging.
“I will never forget seeing her for the first time. I said, ‘This feels too good to be true,’ because it was just…I thought this would never happen,” says Andrea. A hand drawn portrait of her daughter Vivian, now 4, hangs in the background as we chat.
A year after giving birth, Andrea was enjoying motherhood but felt the clock was ticking for her to give Vivian genetic siblings. “These are lives that are waiting,” says Andrea. “I’m like, I have got to get to them.”
She felt that this was her chance to give Vivian the gift of having a genetic connection with someone. From July 2021 to November 2022 Andrea suffered multiple failed embryo transfers and miscarriages. She was exhausted, mentally and physically, and they’d used the rest of their remaining embryos.
Andrea had severe postpartum hemorrhage after Vivian, and was dealing with the trauma of that plus her miscarriages and constant hormone fluctuations. She recounts taking on the increased risk of “immense personal pain and suffering” because she felt she was on a mission that was greater than herself.
“I love every single embryo [we had],” says Andrea. “I love them while they’re in the freezer. Truly I have so much peace because this was a mission that I felt like God had put in my heart. I have fulfilled that mission and I still believe one day I’ll see those babies in heaven.”
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s the country prepares for a change in president in 2025, the state of IVF, reproductive health, and fetal personhood hangs in the balance. Donald Trump has flip-flopped on his stances involving IVF, but there may be a glimpse of the future in
CHILDREN”
“
Jeffrey Keenan, president of the National Embryo Donation Center
(Photo credit: Getty Images)
I love every single embryo [we had]. I love them while they’re in the freezer. Truly, I have so much peace because this was a mission that I felt God had put in my heart.
Andrea Darby
“
More and more states are passing fetal personhood laws
and expanding it in ways that are pretty unimaginable.
Denise Seidelman, attorney
“
Embryos have the potential to become persons, but they should not be afforded the same legal status as a person.
American Society for Reproductive Medicine
“
These are lives that are waiting. I’m like, I have to get to them.
Andrea Darby
“
These are already lives that are put together and we’re giving them an opportunity to have life.
Nic Ford
“
“We’re members of the Church of Christ and we thought, God has a plan,” says Andrea, in her light Tennessee twang. Her father is a minister and Nicholas’s dad is an elder at their church. Their shared commitment to their faith is part of what drew them to each other. “We don't want to just try to make everything fit the way we want it to.”
They held off on making any decisions about their future family. Andrea remembers Nicholas telling her, ‘I think this must mean God doesn’t want us to have children at all.’
Andrea didn’t agree. It was a rare moment where a spiritual challenge sent them to opposite conclusions. But she knew they had to be on the same page, so for months, Andrea prayed to God, asking, please work on my husband’s heart.
During that time, while researching infertility online, Andrea came across an article discussing embryo donation. Embryos are fertilized eggs and patients undergoing IVF often freeze and store their extra embryos following their procedures. Multiple embryos are created because it often takes multiple transfers to result in a live birth. People can store their extra embryos—paying an annual fee in case they want to use them to get pregnant later—discard them, or donate them to science education.
Embryo donation is another option. People seek out embryo donation for many reasons; some are unable to create biological embryos of their own or lack the financial resources to undergo a full cycle of IVF. Others do so because they feel like they’re saving the lives of “frozen children.”
For those, like Andrea, who firmly believe life begins at conception, these embryos are known as “snowflake babies,” a term coined by Nightlight Christian Adoptions. The name of their embryo matching service, Snowflakes, refers to the way that embryos are frozen in order to be stored and how each embryo is “unique,” like a snowflake. Conservative organizations, like Nightlight, also use language that states embryos are living people; often referred to as fetal personhood. While embryo donation and fetal personhood are not synonymous, the Christian right has an outsized influence on how reproductive healthcare issues are viewed.
Once Andrea discovered the concept of embryo donation, she felt like she’d found her life’s calling. “These are lives that exist already and they just need an opportunity,” she remembers thinking. This could not only help her get pregnant, in her mind, it would also allow her to save those destined to “be in a freezer forever.”
With tears in her eyes, she adds, “These are children that are there waiting, and all they need is someone to give them a chance.”
“We’re members of the Church of Christ and we thought, God has a plan,” says Andrea, in her light Tennessee twang. Her father is a minister and Nicholas’s dad is an elder at their church. Their shared commitment to their faith is part of what drew them to each other. “We don't want to just try to make everything fit the way we want it to.”
They held off on making any decisions about their future family. Andrea remembers Nicholas telling her, ‘I think this must mean God doesn’t want us to have children at all.’
Andrea didn’t agree. It was a rare moment where a spiritual challenge sent them to opposite conclusions. But she knew they had to be on the same page, so for months, Andrea prayed to God, asking, please work on my husband’s heart.
During that time, while researching infertility online, Andrea came across an article discussing embryo donation. Embryos are fertilized eggs and patients undergoing IVF often freeze and store their extra embryos following their procedures. Multiple embryos are created because it often takes multiple transfers to result in a live birth. People can store their extra embryos—paying an annual fee in case they want to use them to get pregnant later—discard them, or donate them to science education.
ven before she could read, Andrea Darby knew she wanted to be a mother. In kindergarten, she’d gone to
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(Photo credit: Getty Images)
started making embryos,” says Andrea Braverman, a clinical professor of OB-GYN and psychiatry at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. “But embryo donation really has grown as a family building option significantly in the last ten years.”
In fact, from 2004 to 2019, the annual number of donated embryo transfers has more than tripled. Reproductive health experts say this is for a variety of reasons: knowledge about the procedure has increased, traditional adoption availability has decreased, embryo donation is cheaper than IVF or egg donation and thus much more accessible. The cost of embryo donation varies depending on whether or not you use a standalone matching service, go to a full-service facility, or are taking over the cost of storage and paying for an embryo transfer. A full-service process generally costs between $10,000 and $14,000. On the other hand, IVF can cost as much as $30,000 for one transfer, with most people needing multiple transfers. The number of people seeking to expand their families, including single women and LGBTQ+ couples, has also increased, with some turning to embryo donation programs.
“You have international adoption really folding,” says Denise Seidelman, an attorney who has worked in adoption and reproductive law for nearly 28 years. “You have the number of newborn children being placed for adoption dramatically declining, and with same-sex marriage and parenting being so much more prevalent today, the number of people seeking children has dramatically expanded. Embryo donation really does open up a world for people—it’s a game-changer.”
But it’s impossible to fully understand the complex world of embryo donation without taking into account the current socio-political world it exists in. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs decision, reproductive health has taken center stage in politics and public conversation. As abortion rights activists have predicted for years, this conversation has affected far more than just abortion.
“More and more states are passing fetal personhood laws and expanding it in ways that are pretty unimaginable,” says Seidelman. Fetal personhood is the idea that fetuses and embryos should have the same legal rights as people. Pregnancy Justice’s September 2024 report found that 17 states have fetal personhood laws.
While some proposed “personhood” laws specifically target fetuses and exclude embryos, this is also changing. Earlier this year the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos could be considered children, and anybody who destroyed the frozen embryos—either intentionally or accidentally—could be subject to a wrongful death suit, sparking a nationwide debate about IVF, which is overwhelmingly supported by the public at large; both Democrats and Republicans. The court ruling caused several Alabama clinics to temporarily halt IVF treatments, and created a precedent that added fuel to the fire for those seeking to claim fetal personhood rights for embryos. This emboldened the far-right to come out with their objections to IVF, which some Christian opponents feel is a science that is akin to playing God. This summer, the Southern Baptist Church approved a resolution criticizing IVF practices, but they recommended that members consider “adopting frozen embryos.”
mbryo donation isn’t new, but it is gaining in popularity. “It has been a part of IVF since we first
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receive or donate. The process for clinics is usually more transactional, and is less focused on matching people’s values or offering a large selection of options. Braverman also directs patients to national self-matching websites, like Empower with Moxi, that help recipients and donors with similar desires and goals find each other.
But their presence belies the strong foothold of faith-based organizations operating in the space. When organizations put religion at the root of family planning, it not only shapes conversations around how embryo donation is viewed, but for what purpose embryo donation is used, and who is able to use it.
National Embryo Donation Center (NEDC) is a Christian organization that’s also one of the biggest full-service embryo donation services. “Embryo adoption is a wonderful way to honor God’s tiniest image-bearers,” text on the website reads. Among the requirements of the donor recipients is that they are a couple who have been married for at least three years. NEDC doesn’t accept single parents and they require it to be a heterosexual marriage.
President Jeffrey Keenan, M.D., says couples come to NEDC for many reasons, including fertility struggles, issues with genetic diseases, or failed attempts at traditional adoption. “Others say, ‘We heard about the plight of these million and a half frozen embryos in the United States and we want to be part of the solution, rather than be part of a problem. For a number of people, it’s a rescue mission.”
Snowflakes executive director Beth Button, says that while they assist those regardless of their sexual orientation or marital status, they tend to attract Christian adopters and donors, so if they feel like a family will be harder to match (donors can stipulate who can receive their embryos), they sometimes refer them to another agency.
Eight-five to ninety percent of the recipients Button works with have experienced or are experiencing infertility, but she says there is also a percentage who do not struggle with infertility but believe in saving embryos. “We do have those who might already have biological children, or have adopted domestically or internationally and just see a need for these embryos to have a chance to be born, so they apply,” says Button.
That was the case for Kaity and Nic Ford, who live in rural Colorado and have four biological children, ranging from ages 8 to 15. The couple met at “cowboy church,” a Bible-based church full of “cowboys, ranchers, and bikers” as Kaity puts it. Nic is a pipeline manager at an oil field, and his family is in the rodeo.
Kaity, 35, and Nic, 41, were introduced to embryo donation when initially working with Nightlight on adopting a baby daughter they were fostering. After their foster daughter was reunited with her birth family, Kaity and Nic had already renovated the house for another child and set their mind on adoption.
“We really wanted to help kids that aren’t getting adopted,” says Kaity on a video call in early November, framed black and white photos of her children going up the staircase behind her. She remembers the adoption caseworker asking her, “Have you ever considered embryo adoption instead?”
Kaity says the caseworker explained what the process was, and that often people who are looking into traditional adoption can’t biologically get pregnant, but since Kaity could, she could give these embryos a chance at life. They went ahead with the matching process and gave birth to baby Urijah in July 2022. Now two, Urijah crawls into Nic’s lap as we talk, smiling and waving.
There are people in their cowboy church community who aren’t comfortable with IVF, and Nic says he often has to explain what embryo donation is, emphasizing that they weren’t responsible for initially creating the embryos. “Some people think the science side of it is a little screwy so they question it, “says Nic. “And then you explain, no these are already lives that are put together and we’re giving them an opportunity to have life.” As he speaks, Kaity pats at her stomach. She’s currently five months pregnant with Urijah’s genetic sibling, a baby boy due in May.
ocal IVF clinics also offer donated embryo transfers, and some have a waiting list of people looking to
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(Photo credit: Getty Images)
living in Birmingham in 2018 and NEDC was nearby in Knoxville, Tennessee. Andrea said the fact that it was faith-based was not a requirement for her, but that it ended up being a comfort knowing that the physicians she was working with had the same value system she did.
Andrea describes going to Knoxville for bloodwork and a physical exam in order to get medically cleared that she could carry an embryo. She went through the state of Alabama to have a licensed social worker come to perform a home study for adopting parents, which NEDC requires.
Andrea remembers being overwhelmed by all of the paperwork she needed to gather for the home study: an extensive questionnaire, financial documents, pay stubs, six personal references, and local police department background checks. Both Andrea and Nicholas had to write full biographies about themselves and talk about who would get their (at the time theoretical) child in the event of their death. Someone visited her home to go through a checklist of safety requirements.
Three months after they visited NEDC and started the home study process, the matching process began. In January 2019, Andrea and Nicholas specifically looked at profiles with embryos that had been frozen for a long time and might not be as likely to get selected by those looking to start a family. “We wanted to fulfill a need outside of our own needs,” says Andrea.
The profiles described the donors' ages, race, and occupations along with physical characteristics like hair, eye, color, height, occupation. Then once Andrea and Nicholas narrowed their selection, they were sent full profiles with more details, including health history and lifestyle information like hobbies and interests.
They chose two embryos from one family that had been frozen for 23 years and eight embryos that had been frozen for 10 to 12 years by a couple who were a doctor and a nurse, like Nicholas and Andrea. Andrea says not only did the second couple have their same jobs, one of them also loved The Lord of the Rings, which was a favorite film of hers.
Andrea and Nicholas only wanted to take the amount of embryos they would eventually implant, and by selecting ten, they knew that could mean a very big family. “With my husband’s job, we had the financial resources to have however many kids God decided to give us,” says Andrea. “We knew from the beginning, when we adopted the embryos, we were making a commitment to those embryos’ lives.”
fter they decided to proceed with embryo donation, Andrea and Nicholas used NEDC. The couple were
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The South Carolina couple had four remaining embryos after Tabatha gave birth to twins—a boy and a girl. She had complications during her pregnancy, and knew that she was not going to get pregnant again. Their fertility clinic told them they could destroy them, donate them to science, or keep them frozen in storage.
“We didn’t like any of those options because we wanted to give them a chance at life, we just knew I couldn’t have them,” Tabatha said in a video interview, Udo at her side. The couple met in the military and have been married for 19 years.
A year after their twins were born, Tabatha’s mother overheard the Christian right radio host James Dobson talking about embryo donation and “snowflake babies” on his show, Focus on the Family. She eagerly passed the message on to her daughter, who was initially conflicted about the idea.
“It was such a new concept, it’s purely our DNA being transferred to someone else,” says Udo. “But the more we thought and prayed about it the more we became comfortable with it and thought how another family might be going through the same struggles and maybe even IVF wouldn’t work for them, this would give them an opportunity to have a full family.”
The couple connected to NEDC to begin the process and felt a connection to the family in the first application packet they opened, which was a man and woman without any children. The receiving family loved Jesus and served in the church, which were both extremely important for Tabatha and Udo. And there were smaller connections too, Tabatha and the future mother both loved cheese and played the saxophone. They would later find out that both of their mothers heard the same Focus on the Family embryo donation story, which led them to NEDC. “Tell me that’s not God!” Tabatha said when recounting the story.
The receiving couple implanted all four embryos, ending up with a girl and a boy two years apart. The families opted for an open donation, and they all reunite once a year. When they get together they often have conversations about nature versus nurture, and Tabatha says she feels like an aunt to the kids, who are jokesters just like her and Udo. “It’s just really cool that they know that they were so loved that we wanted to give them a chance at life. They look exactly like Tabatha,” says Udo, smiling. “Super blonde, super blue-eyed, they’re beautiful.”
n 2010, after undergoing IVF, Tabatha and Udo Mohr were conflicted about what to do with their embryos.
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[They] say, ‘We heard about the plight of these million and a half frozen embryos in the United States and we want to be part of the solution, rather than be part of the problem. For a number of people, it’s a rescue mission.’
Jeffrey Keenan, president National Embryo Donation Center
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I love every single embryo [we had]. I love them while they’re in the freezer. Truly, I have so much peace because this was a mission that I felt God had put in my heart.
Andrea Darby
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More and more states are passing fetal personhood laws and expanding it in ways that are pretty unimaginable.
Denise Seidelman, attorney
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SAVE "FROZEN"