via WSJ:
There are many ways to be a mother. Lynn Wesley has pursued about all of them.
Wesley, a high-school algebra teacher in Dalton, Mass., has taken in more than 70 children for foster care over the years, some for just a night or two. Social workers sometimes woke her up, asking if they could bring over a baby right away. She adopted three of them, two girls and a boy, now ages 7, 12 and 14. Wesley, 40, tried to have her own baby through artificial insemination. When that didn’t work, she turned to in vitro fertilization.
She gave birth to a daughter in 2018. That left her with three embryos that went into cold storage with more than a million others kept by families in facilities around the U.S. IVF entails the extraction of eggs from a woman, and, because of advances, doctors are more likely than in the past to implant only one embryo at a time. Higher success rates—the procedure now accounts for an estimated 2% of U.S. births—leave more embryos unused.
Wesley didn’t consider her embryos children. They were potential children, and she wrestled with a question facing other women and families holding on to embryos: What is my duty to them? Her clinic charged more than $500 a year to store embryos, money she felt would be better spent on raising her children. Some people allow their embryos to be used in medical research or decide to discard them. Many pay storage fees for years, putting off decisions.
Wesley decided to donate hers—to other women seeking motherhood. “If I can help them in some way, I think I should,” she said.