No one knows for sure how many embryos are frozen in storage tanks, but the figure is thought to be somewhere between 1 million and 10 million in the US alone. Some of these embryos have been in storage for years or decades. In some cases, the intended parents have deliberately chosen this, opting to pay hundreds of dollars per year in fees.
But in other cases, clinics have lost touch with their clients. Many of these former clients have stopped paying for the storage of their embryos, but without up-to-date consent forms, clinics can be reluctant to destroy them. What if the person comes back and wants to use those embryos after all?
“Most clinics, if they have any hesitation or doubt or question, will err on the side of holding on to those embryos and not discarding them,” says Sigal Klipstein, a reproductive endocrinologist at InVia Fertility Center in Chicago, who also chairs the ethics committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. “Because it’s kind of like a one-way ticket.”
Klipstein thinks one of the reasons why some embryos end up “abandoned” in storage is that the people who created them can’t bring themselves to destroy them. “It’s just very emotionally difficult for someone who has wanted so much to have a family,” she tells me.
Klipstein says she regularly talks to her patients about what to do with leftover embryos. Even people who make the decision with confidence can change their minds, she says. “We’ve all had those patients who have discarded embryos and then come back six months or a year later and said: ‘Oh, I wish I had those embryos,’” she tells me. “Those [embryos may have been] their best chance of pregnancy.”
Those who do want to discard their embryos have options. Often, the embryos will simply be exposed to air and then disposed of. But some clinics will also offer to transfer them at a time or place where a pregnancy is extremely unlikely to result. This “compassionate transfer,” as it is known, might be viewed as a more “natural” way to dispose of the embryo.
But it’s not for everyone. Holligan has experienced multiple miscarriages and wonders if a compassionate transfer might feel similar. She wonders if it might just end up “putting [her] body and mind through unnecessary stress.”
Ultimately, for Holligan and many others in a similar position, the choice remains a difficult one. “These are … very desired embryos,” says Klipstein. “The purpose of going through IVF was to create embryos to make babies. And [when people] have these embryos, and they’ve completed their family plan, they’re in a place they couldn’t have imagined.”