Michelle McKoy is in love with her miracle daughter named Mishiko, who is just 3 months old. McKoy felt like she walked to the ends of the earth for this baby, battling endometriosis and multiple rounds of fertilization.
At the age of 49, McKoy got pregnant for the first time.
“Knowing all I had to go through to get to this point is mind-boggling,” said McKoy, thinking back on her journey.
When McKoy decided to try to carry a child three years ago, the cost of in vitro fertilization, which ranges between $15,000 - $20,000 in the U.S., made her dreams seem impossible.
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“I found it to be very expensive, it was out of my reach,” McKoy said.
She settled on the Barbados Fertility Center, which she said cost half as much and offered the same quality care. After three tries, she had success and a healthy pregnancy.
“My baby is the most precious thing to me in the world,” McKoy said.
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Knowing the grueling process of IVF and the toll it takes on your mind and body, McKoy's heart breaks for women in Alabama who recently lost care in the wake of the state’s Supreme Court ruling.
“You’re injecting every day, multiple times a day, all in preparation for your transfer, and that in itself takes a lot of energy out of you, and then for that to just stop automatically, that’s nerve-wracking,” McKoy said. “Not knowing when you’ll be able to do the transfer, that’s even more heartbreaking.”
Alabama’s Supreme Court ruled last week that embryos are considered children. Many IVF medical facilities paused treatment immediately not knowing what the legal fallout could be.
People are now considering other options.
“The Alabama ruling creates huge uncertainty. The day that happened, we saw a spike in inquiries from Alabama immediately,” said Dr. Juliet Skinner, the medical director at Barbados Fertility Center. “We saw the same thing when Roe v. Wade got overturned, the same thing. We saw a spike in inquiries for patients that were saying, hold on, let’s think again.”
McKoy is forever grateful her IVF journey brought her daughter to her. She worries that won’t be the case for many other families.
“What are the choices available for those who are having unexplained fertility experiences?" McKoy said.
A proposed bill in Florida that would define a fetus as an “unborn child” and potentially have the same chilling effect on IVF treatment is now on hold. The bill’s sponsor requested to postpone a committee vote on the bill, making its future uncertain.
