December 17, 2025 • 43 mins
As new chapters unfold, experts examine whether the law can truly recognize the harm caused when fertility care fails. Former CRH patients are left to reckon with the lives they’re living — and how far some have diverged from what they once imagined.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
You can't go through IBF and still be one hundred
percent of the same person you are when you first
started out. It's going to change you.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I'm sitting with Sydney in her home outside of Nashville.
She's holding her baby daughter, who's giving me sweet eyes
and dribbling on her bib.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
I know how lucky we are that we did have
best case scenario, and I know the others you're still
trying to get there, and I just really hope for
the best.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
My heart hurts for them. Sydney's daughter's name is Story
for the story she represents. Sydney gave birth to her
in May twenty twenty five, just a little over a
year after the Center for Reproductive Health shut down. She
was born from one of the embryos that Sydney managed
to retrieve from the clinic right before it closed and
(00:56):
the state took over control of the crogenic tanks.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
We had gone back and forth, and I was like, well,
what if we name her story. She has such a story.
We went through so much to get here to this point,
from me having an ectopic pregnancy to going through all
the things we did the fertility clinic, and she was
our little embryo that could. I will definitely share all
(01:23):
the things that we went through to have her one
day and hope she knows like how I wanted she
was to. She's her best, little sweet story.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
We love her to pieces, and maybe here is where
those old fairy tales return, the ones where women sacrifice
everything for a child. For Sydney, her fertility journey was
a wild and unpredictable experience. She lived through a burst,
fallopian tube, surgeries and egg retrieval, an embryo rescue mission,
(01:57):
and multiple transfers before she got her happy endings.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Honestly, the baby snuggles are unmatched. I love a good
baby snuggle with a little nap, but it's all so sweet.
And I know that even though sometimes the days are
long and I don't get the most sleep, that it's
gonna pass bay so fast and she'll be going to
school and everything before I know it. So I'm just
(02:22):
trying to soak it all up.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
I'm Melissa Jelson from School of Humans and iHeart podcasts.
This is what happened in Nashville Episode six, Beginnings and Endings.
When Sydney had story, it felt like there was finally
(02:53):
some good news after the abrupt closure of the Center
for Reproductive Health. Though even this happy out came with
a bittersweet edge. She was the only patient, as far
as I could tell, who managed to get her embryos
out before the clinic shut down, which meant she got
a head start on moving and using them. For everyone
(03:15):
else who had embryos in storage, they had to wait
from April to November, about seven months, and by then
Sydney was already three months pregnant. She told me she
felt terrible about that, almost a sense of survivor's guilt,
that she was able to move forward while others were
(03:36):
stuck in limbo. So she was careful about what she
shared publicly in the Facebook support group, wanting the focus
to remain on the patients with more pressing needs.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
It may be extremely nervous like to share, just because
I know what that feels like. It's a gut punch,
you know, to see the people experience pregnancy while their
embryos are still being inventoried. I would never want to
hurt their feelings.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
But she did confide in one person, another former CRH patient, Mary.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Having Mary like completely changed everything for me, because like
I had somebody to talk to that not only like listened,
but I actually like understood, completely understood. I will say
that the people that you do meet while going through
IVF are some of the best people. So that's one
thing that I think before that because of this, because
(04:30):
of what doctor Basquez has done, I will have lifelong
friends like Mary.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
As you may remember, Mary was the woman who had
an appointment this same morning as Sydney, but wasn't told
about the clinic's imminent closure. Like so many others, Mary
had embryos in storage, trapped behind closed doors and procedural
red tape. Her dilemma, which Mary spoke about on the news,
(04:57):
caught the attention of another local couple who offered to
donate their unused embryos to her. Running out of time
and patience, Mary used them and it worked. She got pregnant,
and because Mary's son was premature, she actually gave birth
a few weeks before Sydney.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
He's a five and a half months and he just
learned how to roll over from his back to tummy,
so now he's just kind.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
Of rolling all over the place. So that's really cute.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
When I talked to Mary in the throes of new parenthood,
I was struck by just how different she seemed. During
most of our conversations over the past year and a half,
she'd been angry, frustrated, and sad. Now she had a
lightness about her. She was smiling. He has the best
belly laughs.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
His armpits are really ticklish, and so he does this
like big belly laugh when you tickle him, and it
just is like it makes you laugh so hard you
cry because it's the cutest thing you've ever like, Oh,
I don't know. I spend every minute I can on
the floor with him, just like doing tummy time, talking, playing,
and everything about him is just the best.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Motherhood has reshaped Mary's life in ways she's still processing.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
I don't even know how to explain it. It's everything
and more. It's probably more. I mean, it's exhausting, but
like in the best way. I just I love it.
I love every aspect of it, all the stages.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
After the Center for Reproductive Health shut down, Mary became
a patient at a different fertility clinic, the Nashville Fertility Center,
which was where she had her embryo transfer. With everything
Mary and her husband had been through, establishing care somewhere
new required a leap of faith, a willingness to trust again.
(06:57):
But the new clinic made it easy almost immediately. She
told me, the difference in care felt unmistakable.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
I mean, the Nashville facility dinner, it's just you know,
the nurses call you back same day.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
The doctor's care so much.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
When we went for my first appointment with them, the
doctor told me that he had spent two hours on
the weekend reviewing my file before my appointment, and he
wrote up notes from my experience before even talking to
me to feel like he was also coming in prepared
instead of just being hit with.
Speaker 5 (07:32):
A thousand pages of medical records.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
So he really took the time on his days off
even to prepare for our appointment. And to me, I
will never forget that.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Now with fertility care, she feels she can trust. Mary
wants to try for another baby soon. She finally has
access to the two embryos she and her husband had
in storage at CRCH, the ones created with donor eggs
and her husband's sperm.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
I'm already so ready to do another transfer. I'm like,
you know, we're planning on doing one in February. So
we just got cleared. Actually, actually today I had appointments,
and we just got cleared and everything looks really good.
So we're gonna move forward in February with another one
with our actual embryos.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Since Mary successfully got pregnant and gave birth from her
first embryo transfer with the Nashville Fertility Center, she's hopeful
about her chances of doing it again, but she still
worries that her two embryos that were trapped at CRH
after it shut down might have been compromised while stored
there or during the transport process.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Will A pardon me always feel like if this doesn't work,
it's because of how they were taken care of. Absolutely,
but it's something I'll have to work through. That anger,
that sadness. I'm trying to learn how to process that still,
but it's getting there.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Beyond the immediate concerns about her embryos, her quick success
with the Nashville Fertility Center also raises a bigger, more
painful question. Mary can't help but wonder would things have
turned out differently if she hadn't started her IVF journey
at the Center for Reproductive Health. She did two IVF
(09:17):
cycles with doctor Vaskez, ending up with just one embryo
an embryo that didn't implant. After that, she says she
was encouraged to move on to donor eggs and told
that her own genetics were likely the issue. But what
if that wasn't true. She can't stop thinking about whether
(09:38):
she might have conceived sooner and with her own eggs
if she'd been at a different clinic from the beginning.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Even the specialty doctor I'm with now at the Nashville
Fertility Center, we had a really long meeting a month
ago and she was just like, I really think you
could be successful if we did a round of IBF,
like using the protocols here. She wished we had the
money to do around because she feels that we could
be more be successful with having a baby with both
(10:08):
our genes.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
But another round of IVF is not in the cards
for the couple if the two embryos they already have
don't work, they've agreed that they'll be done with fertility treatments.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
We've put so much of our money, like we we
can't move into a bigger house because I mean, we
just we've poured every year's worth of my husband's Christmas
bonuses into fertility for six years. If we keep going,
We're gonna take away from our son. It's going to
take away from him if I'm at appointments all the time,
or if I'm on you know, hormone treatments and not
(10:46):
in you know, they don't make you very fun, And
just the expense of it all takes away from us
being able to like move forward in our lives. So
it's not just about me and my husband anymore.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Mary's not the only one left with lingering what ifs.
Over the year and a half I spent reporting this case,
I heard it again and again from other patients. Would
our story have been different at another clinic? The truth
is there's no easy answer. Even with excellent doctors, well
(11:20):
trained staff, and impeccable care, not everyone succeeds with fertility treatment.
There's that nearly twenty five percent who try for years
but never end up with a child. Sometimes there's simply
no clear explanation. You can't necessarily tell if you're unsuccessful
(11:40):
because of bad luck, biology or if the care you've
got wasn't very good. Even for women who ultimately did
have a child at CRH, there are stubborn questions about
the quality of care they received. Here's Kristin Wall, who
we heard from an episode four she and her wife
(12:01):
had gone to CRH for reciprocal IVF.
Speaker 6 (12:04):
I immediately just started questioning everything. I was concerned about
the care I received, and I honestly thought, like, would
my outcome had been different had I gone somewhere else.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Kristen's first transfer with doctor Vascus, when she was twenty
nine years old, ended in a miscarriage. For her second transfer,
the clinic recommended she transfer to embryos at once, a
practice that has largely fallen out of favor for healthy,
younger patients like Kristin.
Speaker 6 (12:39):
They were really pressuring us into transferring too embryos.
Speaker 5 (12:45):
I never I didn't want to.
Speaker 6 (12:47):
I was really vulnerable at that time and really upset,
and hindsight, I probably should have jumped into a transfer
so quickly afterwards, but I did, and I was like, yes,
do it, Like just do it, because they were pushing
me to and I was terrified.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
As you may remember, both embryos implanted and Kristin became
pregnant with twins, but soon after she had a type
of miscarriage called vanishing twin syndrome when she lost one
of the embryos in utero. This was exactly the type
of thing she'd been wanting to avoid and why Kristin
had resisted the idea to transfer to in the first place.
(13:27):
These back to back losses impacted her deeply. Then, add
on to all of that the abrupt closure of the
clinic where she'd successfully conceived her child and the confusion
in the months that followed.
Speaker 6 (13:42):
I'd been in therapy this whole last year, like for
that specific reason, because I do feel such conflicted feelings
about everything, because on one hand, I have a child
and that's what we wanted, and she's beautiful and healthy
and happy, and on the other hand, I feel a
little bit robbed of that experience because I feel like
(14:04):
I spent the first year of her life going through
this really traumatic event and having to deal with it.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Recently, Kristin went to another fertility clinic as she and
her wife are getting ready to try to expand their
family once more. There, she discovered she had a condition
called low protein s which can cause blood clots and
early miscarriages. Her new doctor told her that she would
proactively be put on a blood thinner after she does
(14:34):
her next embryo transfer to help prevent miscarriages, But as
far as Kristin can remember, this issue never came up
at CRH. She doesn't think they tested for it. It's
possible she has developed it since, but still the question remains.
She had two miscarriages at CRH. Could those have been
(14:57):
avoided the challenges she faced. Kristen is now a mother
because of CRH and doctor Vazquez, and she's grateful.
Speaker 6 (15:09):
And so I've really been trying to come to the
understanding with myself that it's okay to have two feelings
at one. It's okay to be happy that that happened
and also really frustrated and sad that the other thing
happened as well. And I understand that my story is
my story, and it's what led me to my child,
and if I'm being perfectly honest, I would go through
(15:31):
it all again just to have her.
Speaker 7 (15:40):
I cannot think of another situation in life where you
are in an absolute cycle of hope and despair and
hope and despair and hope and despair and hope and
despair every single month, time after time. It's so much
to bay.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
I returned to Nashville in September twenty twenty five, a
year and a half after the clinic closed to check
in on the people I've been following. I had planned
to get together with Sydney Mary and both their babies,
but Mary had to cancel at the last minute as
she and her baby had hand foot in mouth disease
(16:22):
mom problems. But I did get the chance to see
other CRH patients, like Sarah and Penny. They were two
of the women who had undergone IUIS at the clinic
with doctor Ferrer Dyer, a man they say they only
later learned did not have a medical license. We met
at Sarah's house, the same place which sat together the
(16:44):
year before, back in twenty twenty four. That was the
same trip when we unsuccessfully tried to talk to doctor
Vaskez at the hearing. Since then, both women had moved
to a new clinic and gone through a full round
of eyes, neither yet had a child. Whatever early optimism
(17:05):
they once had the belief that treatment might be straightforward
or quick, have been discarded. Here's Sarah.
Speaker 7 (17:15):
The last year has been extremely difficult. We took some
time to focus on my health, lose weight and then
do IVF. We had a family member, my aunt generously
offered to pay for IVF for us, and so we
(17:36):
were able to do it, and first protocol wasn't right,
so we had to stop it halfway through start over
with new meds. Second protocol everything was perfect. I had
tons of follicles, and when they got in there to
do the eggertry, they couldn't get to over half the
eggs because of a fibroid that had grown. We got
(17:57):
nothing out of it, so we have no embryos. We
don't really know what our next steps are going to be.
Right now, we're weighing multiple options. Going into another eg
retrieval feels.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Very scary.
Speaker 7 (18:11):
I don't don't I honestly don't think that I can
mentally or physically make it through another failed egg retrieval.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
I asked Sarah how this experience, the clinics collapse and
everything that followed had affected her.
Speaker 7 (18:26):
I think I was so focused at a certain point
on the betrayal and the mistrust and how could somebody
do this? And obviously that's never going to go away,
that's always going to be there, But at this point
it's figuring.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
Out how to not let that take life away from.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Me, even when everything goes the way it's supposed to.
Sarah told me, fertility treatment changes you.
Speaker 7 (18:53):
This journey is one that people go on and they
don't realize what's going to happen. You are never going
to be the same person you were before this. Your
husband's not going to be married to the same woman
that he's married to before you start in fertility. I
spent the first two years of us doing treatments, just
like I've got to get back to myself. I've got
to get back to myself. But that's not reality. I'm
(19:15):
a different person and that's okay, and I need to
find out who she is, and that's what I've spent
the last eight or nine months doing.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Sarah said she'd reached a point where she could think
about life beyond treatment and what it might look like
if IVF didn't work.
Speaker 7 (19:30):
If we get to the end of this and we
don't end up with a baby, then we'll move on
and we'll have a happy life, and we'll adopt a
hundred cats and animals, and we'll have a big farm
and it'll be fabulous. It's not the end of the world.
It was at one point the absolute end of the
world for me not to be a mom, but I
also have come to realize that just because I don't
have a child of my own doesn't mean that I
(19:52):
don't get to be a mom. I still have two
wonderful little nephews. There's kids in the neighborhood that I
Every single kid in the neighborhood comes to our front board.
I'm a mom to whoever needs it.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
When Penny arrived at Sarah's house, still in scrubs from
her job at a lab, she told me that she too,
was finally learning to live with everything that happened at
the Center for Reproductive Health.
Speaker 8 (20:21):
I mean, I think at this point it's kind of
wild to say, but I think I've kind of moved
past it. They never came out and said sorry for anything.
But I think in my mind, I have to just
forgive them and move on.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
And she had cautiously good news to share. After the
clinic closed, she had moved on to another fertility clinic
in Nashville, where she had an egg retrieval. Her first
embryo transfer ended in a chemical pregnancy, but her second
had stuck so far, but her count she was five
weeks pregnant. Still, she wasn't celebrating yet, she was too
(20:55):
worried about the potential of losing the pregnancy.
Speaker 8 (20:59):
I think i'm because I've had two miscarriages. It's almost
like I'm not pregnant because you don't want to get
your hopes up and then shot down. So it's almost
easier in my mind to just count it out, so
then if anything good happened, you're on the positive side
of that. But until I'm holding a baby, I think
I'm going to be skeptic. I think that's the reality
of it. I still test every day. I make sure
the line's there, which is kind of wild because it
(21:20):
doesn't really get darker after a certain point, and you
kind of just start to lose your test line. But
I think I'm going to be like that until the
day that I actually give birth. I think that's the
reality of it. I'm trying to tell myself not to
distress it one way or the other, because I can't
control it one way or the other.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Sadly, Penny was right to guard her heart. Three weeks later,
I got a text from her. At Penny's eight week appointment,
she'd found out the baby had no heartbeat. She'd had
another miscarriage at the time. This episode comes out December
twenty twenty five, the state's case against doctor Vasquez and
(22:00):
the Center for Reproductive Health is still active. In the beginning,
the focus had been on protecting genetic material and securing
patient records. Since then, the case has slowed to a crawl.
There's still some hope that patients might eventually receive financial restitution,
but so far no one has seen a dime. I
(22:25):
keep thinking about what accountability could even look like for
people whose fertility journeys were disrupted at such a crucial point.
Many patients told me they felt like the lawsuit didn't
truly acknowledge the reality of what had been taken from them.
The framing as a consumer protection case felt almost absurd
(22:48):
to them. A legal category meant for knockoff products and
false advertising was being used to explain what had happened
to their bodies, their embryos, their mental health, their families.
Speaker 9 (23:03):
That's the model.
Speaker 10 (23:05):
It does not afford any recognition for the more profound
nature of the loss.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Here's legal scholar Dove Fox again.
Speaker 10 (23:14):
It says that you are a consumer and a business
did not represent the truth of a product, whether it
be a TV or nachos or whatever else. It doesn't
recognize your stake in health care or reproductive hopes and dreams,
or family planning as anything that is special that accordingly
(23:37):
would merit either greater protections, more care, or more compensation.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
And yet a consumer protection lawsuit is often the only
legal path available in cases like this, not because the
harm is small, but because the law has almost no
mechanism for recognizing what fertility patients actually lose when things
go wrong. Fox calls this kind of harm reproductive negligence.
Speaker 10 (24:05):
The law just doesn't recognize the disruption of family planning
as a legal cause of action. Our laws don't recognize
those kinds of injuries as the sort that are either
real or substantial enough for the law to care about
(24:26):
for courts to intervene in to compensate people who are
victims of misconduct.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
When the law frames these losses as simple consumer disputes,
it misses their true weight, and that, says Fox, speaks
to a larger unease in how the US defines and
values fertility treatment.
Speaker 10 (24:48):
We are really really uncertain in this country with what
it is and how we value it and how we
treat it. Patients are left in the dark to plan
family at their own risk, to steal themselves against the
consequences of medicine and technology when it goes awry.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
On my last morning in Nashville, I got up early
and walked from my hotel room to the site of
the former Center for Reproductive Health so I could see
it for myself. I brought my toddler with me, pushing
her into her stroller. The walk took about thirty minutes.
As I got closer, the landscape shifted from coffee shops
(25:43):
and student housing into a full blown medical district. Suddenly
it was all tall buildings, neatly marked entrances, and the
kind of parking lots that wrap around hospitals like a moat.
I used to work at a children's hospital in Boston,
and the whole scene felt familiar. Everything about it projected
competence and safety. It's the kind of environment where you'd
(26:07):
go for an MRI or cancer treatment. I could imagine
as a patient of CRH, how reassuring it would have
felt like you were in good hands. I found the
right building and walked in without issue, jumped in the elevator.
I got off on the fourth floor, and immediately to
my left I saw the door to the now closed
(26:28):
Center for Reproductive Health. Through the glass, I could see
a darkened lobby, now empty of furniture. In the window,
someone had taped a piece of paper explaining that the
clinic was the subject of a state lawsuit and instructing
patients elsewhere for more information. On the sign outside the clinic,
the name of the practice had been removed. It's just
(26:51):
blank now. After a year and a half of reporting
the story, I still don't have answers to everything, but
I do have a theory about what happened at the
Center for Reproductive Health. It's not overly dramatic or conspiratorial.
It's something far more ordinary and in some ways more unsettling.
(27:15):
It's undeniable that over the years, doctor Vasquez and his
team helped women become mothers. There are many children alive
today because of his work. But running a full service
fertility clinic is logistically complex and expensive. Doctor Vasquez had
a clinical practice, an operating room, and a lab. To
(27:38):
keep it all going required constant coordination, careful record keeping,
and layers of internal checks. CRH was essentially a one
doc shop. Doctor Vasquez wasn't part of an academic center
or a multi physician practice. He didn't have the built
in safeguards that come from working a lot alongside other
(28:00):
leaders and medical peers, the people who challenge your decisions,
flag problems, and keep standards tight. I don't think this
is a story of intentional wrongdoing. I think it was
a slow grinding collapse, a clinic that fell behind a
physician without adequate support and no one around to intervene
(28:25):
before the consequences shut everything down. That doesn't excuse what happened,
but it does help explain how a place meant to
create life could unravel the way this one did. In
the end, I'm left with the belief that what happened
in Nashville could happen somewhere else, and probably already has.
(28:47):
Even in the course of reporting this story, I've met
women who've had similar, though not exactly the same events
occur at their clinics. One told me her fertility clinic
merged with another and she lost access to her embryos
for about a year, with the clinic even telling her
at one point they didn't know where they were. A
(29:09):
year of her fertile windows spent just waiting hoping to
get them back. So if the same kinds of errors
and missteps are happening across the IVF industry, often going
unreported and undetected. Then there's a bigger issue here, one
that should worry anyone who's looking to go into fertility treatment.
(29:31):
How can we prevent these mistakes and protect the patients
who are risking everything?
Speaker 5 (29:40):
The question is how much regulation of those clinics do
we want.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
This is Naomi Khan, legal scholar and author of Test
Tube Families. While the fertility market needs legal regulation.
Speaker 5 (29:55):
It's someone who clearly sees the need for more oversight.
I recognize there's also the chance, particularly in a post
jobs world, where we are concerned about overregulation of the
fertility space. On the other hand, there's also the concern
that you don't want fertility clinics to be using outdated
(30:17):
procedures or medical equipment or outdated practices, and so it's
difficult to strike that middle line.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Still, she believes there are many improvements that can be made.
Speaker 5 (30:32):
I would be looking for mandatory reporting of errors, not
just to a regulatory agency, but also to the individual patients.
I'd also be cooking for more insurance coverage of infertility
related issues, and I would be looking for making some
of the voluntary guidelines mandatory. For example, with respective donated damping,
(30:57):
there's no requirement that fertility clinics follow up and check
on any of the information that is reported to them
by the individual donor.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Con also stresses the importance of patient education and transparency
around assisted reproduction.
Speaker 5 (31:14):
That are oversight just of the informed consent process that
fertility clinics would be helpful. We need to make sure
that people understand just what the risks are, both in
the procedure as well as in ultimately producing a bouncing
baby at the end, and so ensuring that deceptive practices
(31:37):
or mislady claims are not made and out these services
seems to be incredibly important. There are some professional guidelines
and some state requirements on this, but again there's no
federal We have no uniformity on this.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
But there are risks to any regulation. For example, costs
for everyone, doctors and patients alike could increase. And then
there is, as con mentions, the concern that greater government
involvement could inadvertently imperil the IVF industry. Many IVF advocates
(32:16):
here in the US fear that bringing more scrutiny to
a practice that involves creating embryos could backfire, leading to
new restrictions that hurt both patients and providers, and their
worries aren't hypothetical. Just a few months before CRH shut down,
the Alabama Supreme Court made headlines by ruling that frozen
(32:39):
embryos should be considered children under state law. The case
stemmed from a wrongful death lawsuit brought by families whose
embryos were destroyed while in storage. The ripple effects were immediate.
IVF clinics across Alabama pause services, afraid they could now
face criminal or civil liability for routine parts of treatment
(33:04):
like discarding non viable embryos or even freezing them, and
Tennessee has been navigating that same tension.
Speaker 9 (33:14):
This bill is something that I have been working on
with legal and stakeholders for the last several months. It
has been a difficult and challenging journey trying to find
information regarding what minimum standards are, what the regulations are,
what the federal statute requires as it relates to the
(33:38):
practice of ART, which is assisted reproductive technologies.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
That's Ryan Williams, a Republican state lawmaker, addressing a subcommittee
of the Tennessee House nearly a year after rh shut down,
Williams introduced a bill he said would strengthen oversight of
fertility clinics, especially in the wake of what happened at
the Center for Reproductive Health.
Speaker 9 (34:04):
The members may also know that the Attorney General is
trying an open case now regarding a fertility clinic that
closed abruptly in Nashville, and the reason for that concerns
me a little bit.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
The bill would have created new licensing requirements for IVF
doctors and clinics, but it also would have profoundly changed
how IVF is typically performed, suggesting bands on genetic testing
of embryos and capping how many embryos could be created
per patient. The bill ultimately died in committee, and months later,
(34:40):
Tennessee lawmakers passed a very different bill, one that explicitly
protected access to IVF, But even that victory was uneasy.
Some legislators immediately pushed back, arguing the state shouldn't endorse
a practice that involves creating and discarding embryos. Within days,
(35:01):
legislative leaders were already signaling that IVF would be back
on the agenda next session. It was a reminder that
the politics surrounding IVF aren't settled, not in Tennessee, not
in Alabama, maybe not in any state. While I was
(35:22):
in Nashville, Sydney posted a question to the Facebook group
she had started a year and a half before to
connect former CRH patients to each other.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
It has been so quiet in this group, and I
do wonder, you know how everybody's doing, Like, you know,
what's the update, because I had seen where a few
had announced that they were pregnant, and then we haven't
heard anything. So just kind of like a check in,
So I think I'm going to do that, just to
see how everybody's doing.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
The responses flooded in. Some former CRH patients had had
babies like her. Others were still trying at clinics, hopeful
that this next round of IVF, this next transfer, would
be the one. And then there were women who had
stopped fertility treatments completely even without success. Women like Aaron Meyer,
(36:17):
the North Carolina flower farmer who spent her retirement funds
on embryos from doctor Vasquez's agency.
Speaker 4 (36:24):
Were about a year and a half out from the
initial trauma. It has shaped my trust, or it has
shaken my trust, I would say, in healthcare and medical professionals.
I don't trust that the industry is not out for
the profit. They see desperation and they see dollar signs.
(36:48):
I'm so very cynical at this point, and personally I'm
done with IVF. I can't stomach any more of it.
It's difficult physically, of course, and it's difficult emotionally going
through it, but it's even more difficult. You don't trust
the healthcare providers, and you don't trust that the honesty
(37:13):
of the outcomes of what's going to actually what the
what the challenges are, what the outcomes might be.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Aaron and her husband are now considering adoption instead.
Speaker 11 (37:25):
At the end of the day, what we hope to
have is a child to raise together and to have
a fulfilling life where there's a little human.
Speaker 4 (37:36):
Being brought up that cares who we are.
Speaker 11 (37:40):
And what happens to us, and to have that experience
of shaping a human together.
Speaker 4 (37:46):
And so adoption is the direction we're headed.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
Erin is not sure what to do with the embryos
they obtained from CRCH, the ones that her clinic of
choice considered too poor quality to be used.
Speaker 4 (38:02):
Our embryos technically are in Tennessee still We've taken responsibility
for these two potential lives, but we don't trust the
information on what is contained in these two.
Speaker 11 (38:19):
Embryos and what their chances are and what their issues are.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
It's left to us to figure out how what happens
to them.
Speaker 11 (38:27):
I don't know what to do with them, and so
at this point, because our time is limited, we need
to focus on how we are going to start a
family now, and with time and healings, it will hopefully
become more clear what we want to do with those embryos.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
Looking back, Aaron knows she can't change what happened at CRH,
but she hopes what she learned can spare someone else
the same pain.
Speaker 4 (38:58):
Anybody coming into IBA.
Speaker 11 (39:00):
I want this to be a cautionary tale. If I
knew what I know now and was starting over at
a younger age, I would have gone to the best clinic.
If you're going to do this, if you're going to
go through IVF, go with a clinic that has a
reputation for success.
Speaker 4 (39:21):
Do your research, ask hard questions.
Speaker 11 (39:24):
Don't take things for granted that you're hold and you're like,
that doesn't quite make sense.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
After everything that happened at CRH, Aaron is left feeling frustrated,
not just by what she went through, but by how
few legal avenues exist for patients like her. She believes
choosing doctor Vazkaz's services changed the entire course of her
reproductive life, and it feels like no one will have
(39:56):
to answer for that.
Speaker 4 (39:58):
I don't foresee there being any punishment.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
She had wanted to bring her own civil lawsuit against
Vazquez to hold him to account for what she believes
he took from her her opportunity to birth the baby herself. Ultimately, though,
she gave up on that idea too. It seemed her
chances of success were too low for the financial costs
she'd have to expend. I spoke with a number of
(40:25):
other patients who came to the same conclusion. They feel
profoundly impacted by the clinic's closure, but their resources are limited.
They're still navigating that tense balance of time and money,
hoping to get pregnant before their biological clock runs out
for good.
Speaker 11 (40:45):
When you're talking about women and families that are spending
so much energy trying to start a family and navigate
all of the components that come with that, and navigate
the trauma all the stuff that happened. The reality is
nobody has that sort of bandwidth to go after him
in that way. I don't know what the endgame is.
Speaker 4 (41:09):
I don't know how The chapter closes.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
With no resolution in sight, Arin remains in the uncomfortable
uncertainty of not knowing how her journey to parenthood will resolve.
She made the same sacrifices familiar to any fertility patient,
and yet three years after she started at CRH, she
doesn't have her fairy tale ending. Erin has already gambled
(41:37):
so much. How many bargains can one person make?
Speaker 11 (41:42):
It's wasted time, wasted resources, wasted dreams. I mean, it's real,
real consequences.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
What Happened in Nashville is a production of School of
Humans and iHeart Podcasts, written, reported, and hosted by me
Melissa Chelson. Our producer is Etily's Perez. Our senior producer
is Amelia Brock, with additional production by Emily Seiner and
Carl Catel. Theme song by Jesse nice Swanger, Sound design,
(42:40):
scoring and mixing by Jeremy Thal and Jesse nice Swanger.
Fact checking by Savannah hugh Lee and Austin Thompson. Our
production manager is Daisy Church. Executive producers are Jason English,
Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley. If you're enjoying
the show, tell everyone you know and don't forget to
(43:00):
leave a rating in your favorite podcast app
You can't go through IBF and still be one hundred
percent of the same person you are when you first
started out. It's going to change you.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I'm sitting with Sydney in her home outside of Nashville.
She's holding her baby daughter, who's giving me sweet eyes
and dribbling on her bib.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
I know how lucky we are that we did have
best case scenario, and I know the others you're still
trying to get there, and I just really hope for
the best.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
My heart hurts for them. Sydney's daughter's name is Story
for the story she represents. Sydney gave birth to her
in May twenty twenty five, just a little over a
year after the Center for Reproductive Health shut down. She
was born from one of the embryos that Sydney managed
to retrieve from the clinic right before it closed and
(00:56):
the state took over control of the crogenic tanks.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
We had gone back and forth, and I was like, well,
what if we name her story. She has such a story.
We went through so much to get here to this point,
from me having an ectopic pregnancy to going through all
the things we did the fertility clinic, and she was
our little embryo that could. I will definitely share all
(01:23):
the things that we went through to have her one
day and hope she knows like how I wanted she
was to. She's her best, little sweet story.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
We love her to pieces, and maybe here is where
those old fairy tales return, the ones where women sacrifice
everything for a child. For Sydney, her fertility journey was
a wild and unpredictable experience. She lived through a burst,
fallopian tube, surgeries and egg retrieval, an embryo rescue mission,
(01:57):
and multiple transfers before she got her happy endings.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Honestly, the baby snuggles are unmatched. I love a good
baby snuggle with a little nap, but it's all so sweet.
And I know that even though sometimes the days are
long and I don't get the most sleep, that it's
gonna pass bay so fast and she'll be going to
school and everything before I know it. So I'm just
(02:22):
trying to soak it all up.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
I'm Melissa Jelson from School of Humans and iHeart podcasts.
This is what happened in Nashville Episode six, Beginnings and Endings.
When Sydney had story, it felt like there was finally
(02:53):
some good news after the abrupt closure of the Center
for Reproductive Health. Though even this happy out came with
a bittersweet edge. She was the only patient, as far
as I could tell, who managed to get her embryos
out before the clinic shut down, which meant she got
a head start on moving and using them. For everyone
(03:15):
else who had embryos in storage, they had to wait
from April to November, about seven months, and by then
Sydney was already three months pregnant. She told me she
felt terrible about that, almost a sense of survivor's guilt,
that she was able to move forward while others were
(03:36):
stuck in limbo. So she was careful about what she
shared publicly in the Facebook support group, wanting the focus
to remain on the patients with more pressing needs.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
It may be extremely nervous like to share, just because
I know what that feels like. It's a gut punch,
you know, to see the people experience pregnancy while their
embryos are still being inventoried. I would never want to
hurt their feelings.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
But she did confide in one person, another former CRH patient, Mary.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Having Mary like completely changed everything for me, because like
I had somebody to talk to that not only like listened,
but I actually like understood, completely understood. I will say
that the people that you do meet while going through
IVF are some of the best people. So that's one
thing that I think before that because of this, because
(04:30):
of what doctor Basquez has done, I will have lifelong
friends like Mary.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
As you may remember, Mary was the woman who had
an appointment this same morning as Sydney, but wasn't told
about the clinic's imminent closure. Like so many others, Mary
had embryos in storage, trapped behind closed doors and procedural
red tape. Her dilemma, which Mary spoke about on the news,
(04:57):
caught the attention of another local couple who offered to
donate their unused embryos to her. Running out of time
and patience, Mary used them and it worked. She got pregnant,
and because Mary's son was premature, she actually gave birth
a few weeks before Sydney.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
He's a five and a half months and he just
learned how to roll over from his back to tummy,
so now he's just kind.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
Of rolling all over the place. So that's really cute.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
When I talked to Mary in the throes of new parenthood,
I was struck by just how different she seemed. During
most of our conversations over the past year and a half,
she'd been angry, frustrated, and sad. Now she had a
lightness about her. She was smiling. He has the best
belly laughs.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
His armpits are really ticklish, and so he does this
like big belly laugh when you tickle him, and it
just is like it makes you laugh so hard you
cry because it's the cutest thing you've ever like, Oh,
I don't know. I spend every minute I can on
the floor with him, just like doing tummy time, talking, playing,
and everything about him is just the best.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Motherhood has reshaped Mary's life in ways she's still processing.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
I don't even know how to explain it. It's everything
and more. It's probably more. I mean, it's exhausting, but
like in the best way. I just I love it.
I love every aspect of it, all the stages.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
After the Center for Reproductive Health shut down, Mary became
a patient at a different fertility clinic, the Nashville Fertility Center,
which was where she had her embryo transfer. With everything
Mary and her husband had been through, establishing care somewhere
new required a leap of faith, a willingness to trust again.
(06:57):
But the new clinic made it easy almost immediately. She
told me, the difference in care felt unmistakable.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
I mean, the Nashville facility dinner, it's just you know,
the nurses call you back same day.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
The doctor's care so much.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
When we went for my first appointment with them, the
doctor told me that he had spent two hours on
the weekend reviewing my file before my appointment, and he
wrote up notes from my experience before even talking to
me to feel like he was also coming in prepared
instead of just being hit with.
Speaker 5 (07:32):
A thousand pages of medical records.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
So he really took the time on his days off
even to prepare for our appointment. And to me, I
will never forget that.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Now with fertility care, she feels she can trust. Mary
wants to try for another baby soon. She finally has
access to the two embryos she and her husband had
in storage at CRCH, the ones created with donor eggs
and her husband's sperm.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
I'm already so ready to do another transfer. I'm like,
you know, we're planning on doing one in February. So
we just got cleared. Actually, actually today I had appointments,
and we just got cleared and everything looks really good.
So we're gonna move forward in February with another one
with our actual embryos.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Since Mary successfully got pregnant and gave birth from her
first embryo transfer with the Nashville Fertility Center, she's hopeful
about her chances of doing it again, but she still
worries that her two embryos that were trapped at CRH
after it shut down might have been compromised while stored
there or during the transport process.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Will A pardon me always feel like if this doesn't work,
it's because of how they were taken care of. Absolutely,
but it's something I'll have to work through. That anger,
that sadness. I'm trying to learn how to process that still,
but it's getting there.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Beyond the immediate concerns about her embryos, her quick success
with the Nashville Fertility Center also raises a bigger, more
painful question. Mary can't help but wonder would things have
turned out differently if she hadn't started her IVF journey
at the Center for Reproductive Health. She did two IVF
(09:17):
cycles with doctor Vaskez, ending up with just one embryo
an embryo that didn't implant. After that, she says she
was encouraged to move on to donor eggs and told
that her own genetics were likely the issue. But what
if that wasn't true. She can't stop thinking about whether
(09:38):
she might have conceived sooner and with her own eggs
if she'd been at a different clinic from the beginning.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Even the specialty doctor I'm with now at the Nashville
Fertility Center, we had a really long meeting a month
ago and she was just like, I really think you
could be successful if we did a round of IBF,
like using the protocols here. She wished we had the
money to do around because she feels that we could
be more be successful with having a baby with both
(10:08):
our genes.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
But another round of IVF is not in the cards
for the couple if the two embryos they already have
don't work, they've agreed that they'll be done with fertility treatments.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
We've put so much of our money, like we we
can't move into a bigger house because I mean, we
just we've poured every year's worth of my husband's Christmas
bonuses into fertility for six years. If we keep going,
We're gonna take away from our son. It's going to
take away from him if I'm at appointments all the time,
or if I'm on you know, hormone treatments and not
(10:46):
in you know, they don't make you very fun, And
just the expense of it all takes away from us
being able to like move forward in our lives. So
it's not just about me and my husband anymore.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Mary's not the only one left with lingering what ifs.
Over the year and a half I spent reporting this case,
I heard it again and again from other patients. Would
our story have been different at another clinic? The truth
is there's no easy answer. Even with excellent doctors, well
(11:20):
trained staff, and impeccable care, not everyone succeeds with fertility treatment.
There's that nearly twenty five percent who try for years
but never end up with a child. Sometimes there's simply
no clear explanation. You can't necessarily tell if you're unsuccessful
(11:40):
because of bad luck, biology or if the care you've
got wasn't very good. Even for women who ultimately did
have a child at CRH, there are stubborn questions about
the quality of care they received. Here's Kristin Wall, who
we heard from an episode four she and her wife
(12:01):
had gone to CRH for reciprocal IVF.
Speaker 6 (12:04):
I immediately just started questioning everything. I was concerned about
the care I received, and I honestly thought, like, would
my outcome had been different had I gone somewhere else.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Kristen's first transfer with doctor Vascus, when she was twenty
nine years old, ended in a miscarriage. For her second transfer,
the clinic recommended she transfer to embryos at once, a
practice that has largely fallen out of favor for healthy,
younger patients like Kristin.
Speaker 6 (12:39):
They were really pressuring us into transferring too embryos.
Speaker 5 (12:45):
I never I didn't want to.
Speaker 6 (12:47):
I was really vulnerable at that time and really upset,
and hindsight, I probably should have jumped into a transfer
so quickly afterwards, but I did, and I was like, yes,
do it, Like just do it, because they were pushing
me to and I was terrified.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
As you may remember, both embryos implanted and Kristin became
pregnant with twins, but soon after she had a type
of miscarriage called vanishing twin syndrome when she lost one
of the embryos in utero. This was exactly the type
of thing she'd been wanting to avoid and why Kristin
had resisted the idea to transfer to in the first place.
(13:27):
These back to back losses impacted her deeply. Then, add
on to all of that the abrupt closure of the
clinic where she'd successfully conceived her child and the confusion
in the months that followed.
Speaker 6 (13:42):
I'd been in therapy this whole last year, like for
that specific reason, because I do feel such conflicted feelings
about everything, because on one hand, I have a child
and that's what we wanted, and she's beautiful and healthy
and happy, and on the other hand, I feel a
little bit robbed of that experience because I feel like
(14:04):
I spent the first year of her life going through
this really traumatic event and having to deal with it.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Recently, Kristin went to another fertility clinic as she and
her wife are getting ready to try to expand their
family once more. There, she discovered she had a condition
called low protein s which can cause blood clots and
early miscarriages. Her new doctor told her that she would
proactively be put on a blood thinner after she does
(14:34):
her next embryo transfer to help prevent miscarriages, But as
far as Kristin can remember, this issue never came up
at CRH. She doesn't think they tested for it. It's
possible she has developed it since, but still the question remains.
She had two miscarriages at CRH. Could those have been
(14:57):
avoided the challenges she faced. Kristen is now a mother
because of CRH and doctor Vazquez, and she's grateful.
Speaker 6 (15:09):
And so I've really been trying to come to the
understanding with myself that it's okay to have two feelings
at one. It's okay to be happy that that happened
and also really frustrated and sad that the other thing
happened as well. And I understand that my story is
my story, and it's what led me to my child,
and if I'm being perfectly honest, I would go through
(15:31):
it all again just to have her.
Speaker 7 (15:40):
I cannot think of another situation in life where you
are in an absolute cycle of hope and despair and
hope and despair and hope and despair and hope and
despair every single month, time after time. It's so much
to bay.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
I returned to Nashville in September twenty twenty five, a
year and a half after the clinic closed to check
in on the people I've been following. I had planned
to get together with Sydney Mary and both their babies,
but Mary had to cancel at the last minute as
she and her baby had hand foot in mouth disease
(16:22):
mom problems. But I did get the chance to see
other CRH patients, like Sarah and Penny. They were two
of the women who had undergone IUIS at the clinic
with doctor Ferrer Dyer, a man they say they only
later learned did not have a medical license. We met
at Sarah's house, the same place which sat together the
(16:44):
year before, back in twenty twenty four. That was the
same trip when we unsuccessfully tried to talk to doctor
Vaskez at the hearing. Since then, both women had moved
to a new clinic and gone through a full round
of eyes, neither yet had a child. Whatever early optimism
(17:05):
they once had the belief that treatment might be straightforward
or quick, have been discarded. Here's Sarah.
Speaker 7 (17:15):
The last year has been extremely difficult. We took some
time to focus on my health, lose weight and then
do IVF. We had a family member, my aunt generously
offered to pay for IVF for us, and so we
(17:36):
were able to do it, and first protocol wasn't right,
so we had to stop it halfway through start over
with new meds. Second protocol everything was perfect. I had
tons of follicles, and when they got in there to
do the eggertry, they couldn't get to over half the
eggs because of a fibroid that had grown. We got
(17:57):
nothing out of it, so we have no embryos. We
don't really know what our next steps are going to be.
Right now, we're weighing multiple options. Going into another eg
retrieval feels.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Very scary.
Speaker 7 (18:11):
I don't don't I honestly don't think that I can
mentally or physically make it through another failed egg retrieval.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
I asked Sarah how this experience, the clinics collapse and
everything that followed had affected her.
Speaker 7 (18:26):
I think I was so focused at a certain point
on the betrayal and the mistrust and how could somebody
do this? And obviously that's never going to go away,
that's always going to be there, But at this point
it's figuring.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
Out how to not let that take life away from.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Me, even when everything goes the way it's supposed to.
Sarah told me, fertility treatment changes you.
Speaker 7 (18:53):
This journey is one that people go on and they
don't realize what's going to happen. You are never going
to be the same person you were before this. Your
husband's not going to be married to the same woman
that he's married to before you start in fertility. I
spent the first two years of us doing treatments, just
like I've got to get back to myself. I've got
to get back to myself. But that's not reality. I'm
(19:15):
a different person and that's okay, and I need to
find out who she is, and that's what I've spent
the last eight or nine months doing.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Sarah said she'd reached a point where she could think
about life beyond treatment and what it might look like
if IVF didn't work.
Speaker 7 (19:30):
If we get to the end of this and we
don't end up with a baby, then we'll move on
and we'll have a happy life, and we'll adopt a
hundred cats and animals, and we'll have a big farm
and it'll be fabulous. It's not the end of the world.
It was at one point the absolute end of the
world for me not to be a mom, but I
also have come to realize that just because I don't
have a child of my own doesn't mean that I
(19:52):
don't get to be a mom. I still have two
wonderful little nephews. There's kids in the neighborhood that I
Every single kid in the neighborhood comes to our front board.
I'm a mom to whoever needs it.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
When Penny arrived at Sarah's house, still in scrubs from
her job at a lab, she told me that she too,
was finally learning to live with everything that happened at
the Center for Reproductive Health.
Speaker 8 (20:21):
I mean, I think at this point it's kind of
wild to say, but I think I've kind of moved
past it. They never came out and said sorry for anything.
But I think in my mind, I have to just
forgive them and move on.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
And she had cautiously good news to share. After the
clinic closed, she had moved on to another fertility clinic
in Nashville, where she had an egg retrieval. Her first
embryo transfer ended in a chemical pregnancy, but her second
had stuck so far, but her count she was five
weeks pregnant. Still, she wasn't celebrating yet, she was too
(20:55):
worried about the potential of losing the pregnancy.
Speaker 8 (20:59):
I think i'm because I've had two miscarriages. It's almost
like I'm not pregnant because you don't want to get
your hopes up and then shot down. So it's almost
easier in my mind to just count it out, so
then if anything good happened, you're on the positive side
of that. But until I'm holding a baby, I think
I'm going to be skeptic. I think that's the reality
of it. I still test every day. I make sure
the line's there, which is kind of wild because it
(21:20):
doesn't really get darker after a certain point, and you
kind of just start to lose your test line. But
I think I'm going to be like that until the
day that I actually give birth. I think that's the
reality of it. I'm trying to tell myself not to
distress it one way or the other, because I can't
control it one way or the other.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Sadly, Penny was right to guard her heart. Three weeks later,
I got a text from her. At Penny's eight week appointment,
she'd found out the baby had no heartbeat. She'd had
another miscarriage at the time. This episode comes out December
twenty twenty five, the state's case against doctor Vasquez and
(22:00):
the Center for Reproductive Health is still active. In the beginning,
the focus had been on protecting genetic material and securing
patient records. Since then, the case has slowed to a crawl.
There's still some hope that patients might eventually receive financial restitution,
but so far no one has seen a dime. I
(22:25):
keep thinking about what accountability could even look like for
people whose fertility journeys were disrupted at such a crucial point.
Many patients told me they felt like the lawsuit didn't
truly acknowledge the reality of what had been taken from them.
The framing as a consumer protection case felt almost absurd
(22:48):
to them. A legal category meant for knockoff products and
false advertising was being used to explain what had happened
to their bodies, their embryos, their mental health, their families.
Speaker 9 (23:03):
That's the model.
Speaker 10 (23:05):
It does not afford any recognition for the more profound
nature of the loss.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Here's legal scholar Dove Fox again.
Speaker 10 (23:14):
It says that you are a consumer and a business
did not represent the truth of a product, whether it
be a TV or nachos or whatever else. It doesn't
recognize your stake in health care or reproductive hopes and dreams,
or family planning as anything that is special that accordingly
(23:37):
would merit either greater protections, more care, or more compensation.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
And yet a consumer protection lawsuit is often the only
legal path available in cases like this, not because the
harm is small, but because the law has almost no
mechanism for recognizing what fertility patients actually lose when things
go wrong. Fox calls this kind of harm reproductive negligence.
Speaker 10 (24:05):
The law just doesn't recognize the disruption of family planning
as a legal cause of action. Our laws don't recognize
those kinds of injuries as the sort that are either
real or substantial enough for the law to care about
(24:26):
for courts to intervene in to compensate people who are
victims of misconduct.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
When the law frames these losses as simple consumer disputes,
it misses their true weight, and that, says Fox, speaks
to a larger unease in how the US defines and
values fertility treatment.
Speaker 10 (24:48):
We are really really uncertain in this country with what
it is and how we value it and how we
treat it. Patients are left in the dark to plan
family at their own risk, to steal themselves against the
consequences of medicine and technology when it goes awry.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
On my last morning in Nashville, I got up early
and walked from my hotel room to the site of
the former Center for Reproductive Health so I could see
it for myself. I brought my toddler with me, pushing
her into her stroller. The walk took about thirty minutes.
As I got closer, the landscape shifted from coffee shops
(25:43):
and student housing into a full blown medical district. Suddenly
it was all tall buildings, neatly marked entrances, and the
kind of parking lots that wrap around hospitals like a moat.
I used to work at a children's hospital in Boston,
and the whole scene felt familiar. Everything about it projected
competence and safety. It's the kind of environment where you'd
(26:07):
go for an MRI or cancer treatment. I could imagine
as a patient of CRH, how reassuring it would have
felt like you were in good hands. I found the
right building and walked in without issue, jumped in the elevator.
I got off on the fourth floor, and immediately to
my left I saw the door to the now closed
(26:28):
Center for Reproductive Health. Through the glass, I could see
a darkened lobby, now empty of furniture. In the window,
someone had taped a piece of paper explaining that the
clinic was the subject of a state lawsuit and instructing
patients elsewhere for more information. On the sign outside the clinic,
the name of the practice had been removed. It's just
(26:51):
blank now. After a year and a half of reporting
the story, I still don't have answers to everything, but
I do have a theory about what happened at the
Center for Reproductive Health. It's not overly dramatic or conspiratorial.
It's something far more ordinary and in some ways more unsettling.
(27:15):
It's undeniable that over the years, doctor Vasquez and his
team helped women become mothers. There are many children alive
today because of his work. But running a full service
fertility clinic is logistically complex and expensive. Doctor Vasquez had
a clinical practice, an operating room, and a lab. To
(27:38):
keep it all going required constant coordination, careful record keeping,
and layers of internal checks. CRH was essentially a one
doc shop. Doctor Vasquez wasn't part of an academic center
or a multi physician practice. He didn't have the built
in safeguards that come from working a lot alongside other
(28:00):
leaders and medical peers, the people who challenge your decisions,
flag problems, and keep standards tight. I don't think this
is a story of intentional wrongdoing. I think it was
a slow grinding collapse, a clinic that fell behind a
physician without adequate support and no one around to intervene
(28:25):
before the consequences shut everything down. That doesn't excuse what happened,
but it does help explain how a place meant to
create life could unravel the way this one did. In
the end, I'm left with the belief that what happened
in Nashville could happen somewhere else, and probably already has.
(28:47):
Even in the course of reporting this story, I've met
women who've had similar, though not exactly the same events
occur at their clinics. One told me her fertility clinic
merged with another and she lost access to her embryos
for about a year, with the clinic even telling her
at one point they didn't know where they were. A
(29:09):
year of her fertile windows spent just waiting hoping to
get them back. So if the same kinds of errors
and missteps are happening across the IVF industry, often going
unreported and undetected. Then there's a bigger issue here, one
that should worry anyone who's looking to go into fertility treatment.
(29:31):
How can we prevent these mistakes and protect the patients
who are risking everything?
Speaker 5 (29:40):
The question is how much regulation of those clinics do
we want.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
This is Naomi Khan, legal scholar and author of Test
Tube Families. While the fertility market needs legal regulation.
Speaker 5 (29:55):
It's someone who clearly sees the need for more oversight.
I recognize there's also the chance, particularly in a post
jobs world, where we are concerned about overregulation of the
fertility space. On the other hand, there's also the concern
that you don't want fertility clinics to be using outdated
(30:17):
procedures or medical equipment or outdated practices, and so it's
difficult to strike that middle line.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Still, she believes there are many improvements that can be made.
Speaker 5 (30:32):
I would be looking for mandatory reporting of errors, not
just to a regulatory agency, but also to the individual patients.
I'd also be cooking for more insurance coverage of infertility
related issues, and I would be looking for making some
of the voluntary guidelines mandatory. For example, with respective donated damping,
(30:57):
there's no requirement that fertility clinics follow up and check
on any of the information that is reported to them
by the individual donor.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Con also stresses the importance of patient education and transparency
around assisted reproduction.
Speaker 5 (31:14):
That are oversight just of the informed consent process that
fertility clinics would be helpful. We need to make sure
that people understand just what the risks are, both in
the procedure as well as in ultimately producing a bouncing
baby at the end, and so ensuring that deceptive practices
(31:37):
or mislady claims are not made and out these services
seems to be incredibly important. There are some professional guidelines
and some state requirements on this, but again there's no
federal We have no uniformity on this.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
But there are risks to any regulation. For example, costs
for everyone, doctors and patients alike could increase. And then
there is, as con mentions, the concern that greater government
involvement could inadvertently imperil the IVF industry. Many IVF advocates
(32:16):
here in the US fear that bringing more scrutiny to
a practice that involves creating embryos could backfire, leading to
new restrictions that hurt both patients and providers, and their
worries aren't hypothetical. Just a few months before CRH shut down,
the Alabama Supreme Court made headlines by ruling that frozen
(32:39):
embryos should be considered children under state law. The case
stemmed from a wrongful death lawsuit brought by families whose
embryos were destroyed while in storage. The ripple effects were immediate.
IVF clinics across Alabama pause services, afraid they could now
face criminal or civil liability for routine parts of treatment
(33:04):
like discarding non viable embryos or even freezing them, and
Tennessee has been navigating that same tension.
Speaker 9 (33:14):
This bill is something that I have been working on
with legal and stakeholders for the last several months. It
has been a difficult and challenging journey trying to find
information regarding what minimum standards are, what the regulations are,
what the federal statute requires as it relates to the
(33:38):
practice of ART, which is assisted reproductive technologies.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
That's Ryan Williams, a Republican state lawmaker, addressing a subcommittee
of the Tennessee House nearly a year after rh shut down,
Williams introduced a bill he said would strengthen oversight of
fertility clinics, especially in the wake of what happened at
the Center for Reproductive Health.
Speaker 9 (34:04):
The members may also know that the Attorney General is
trying an open case now regarding a fertility clinic that
closed abruptly in Nashville, and the reason for that concerns
me a little bit.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
The bill would have created new licensing requirements for IVF
doctors and clinics, but it also would have profoundly changed
how IVF is typically performed, suggesting bands on genetic testing
of embryos and capping how many embryos could be created
per patient. The bill ultimately died in committee, and months later,
(34:40):
Tennessee lawmakers passed a very different bill, one that explicitly
protected access to IVF, But even that victory was uneasy.
Some legislators immediately pushed back, arguing the state shouldn't endorse
a practice that involves creating and discarding embryos. Within days,
(35:01):
legislative leaders were already signaling that IVF would be back
on the agenda next session. It was a reminder that
the politics surrounding IVF aren't settled, not in Tennessee, not
in Alabama, maybe not in any state. While I was
(35:22):
in Nashville, Sydney posted a question to the Facebook group
she had started a year and a half before to
connect former CRH patients to each other.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
It has been so quiet in this group, and I
do wonder, you know how everybody's doing, Like, you know,
what's the update, because I had seen where a few
had announced that they were pregnant, and then we haven't
heard anything. So just kind of like a check in,
So I think I'm going to do that, just to
see how everybody's doing.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
The responses flooded in. Some former CRH patients had had
babies like her. Others were still trying at clinics, hopeful
that this next round of IVF, this next transfer, would
be the one. And then there were women who had
stopped fertility treatments completely even without success. Women like Aaron Meyer,
(36:17):
the North Carolina flower farmer who spent her retirement funds
on embryos from doctor Vasquez's agency.
Speaker 4 (36:24):
Were about a year and a half out from the
initial trauma. It has shaped my trust, or it has
shaken my trust, I would say, in healthcare and medical professionals.
I don't trust that the industry is not out for
the profit. They see desperation and they see dollar signs.
(36:48):
I'm so very cynical at this point, and personally I'm
done with IVF. I can't stomach any more of it.
It's difficult physically, of course, and it's difficult emotionally going
through it, but it's even more difficult. You don't trust
the healthcare providers, and you don't trust that the honesty
(37:13):
of the outcomes of what's going to actually what the
what the challenges are, what the outcomes might be.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Aaron and her husband are now considering adoption instead.
Speaker 11 (37:25):
At the end of the day, what we hope to
have is a child to raise together and to have
a fulfilling life where there's a little human.
Speaker 4 (37:36):
Being brought up that cares who we are.
Speaker 11 (37:40):
And what happens to us, and to have that experience
of shaping a human together.
Speaker 4 (37:46):
And so adoption is the direction we're headed.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
Erin is not sure what to do with the embryos
they obtained from CRCH, the ones that her clinic of
choice considered too poor quality to be used.
Speaker 4 (38:02):
Our embryos technically are in Tennessee still We've taken responsibility
for these two potential lives, but we don't trust the
information on what is contained in these two.
Speaker 11 (38:19):
Embryos and what their chances are and what their issues are.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
It's left to us to figure out how what happens
to them.
Speaker 11 (38:27):
I don't know what to do with them, and so
at this point, because our time is limited, we need
to focus on how we are going to start a
family now, and with time and healings, it will hopefully
become more clear what we want to do with those embryos.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
Looking back, Aaron knows she can't change what happened at CRH,
but she hopes what she learned can spare someone else
the same pain.
Speaker 4 (38:58):
Anybody coming into IBA.
Speaker 11 (39:00):
I want this to be a cautionary tale. If I
knew what I know now and was starting over at
a younger age, I would have gone to the best clinic.
If you're going to do this, if you're going to
go through IVF, go with a clinic that has a
reputation for success.
Speaker 4 (39:21):
Do your research, ask hard questions.
Speaker 11 (39:24):
Don't take things for granted that you're hold and you're like,
that doesn't quite make sense.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
After everything that happened at CRH, Aaron is left feeling frustrated,
not just by what she went through, but by how
few legal avenues exist for patients like her. She believes
choosing doctor Vazkaz's services changed the entire course of her
reproductive life, and it feels like no one will have
(39:56):
to answer for that.
Speaker 4 (39:58):
I don't foresee there being any punishment.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
She had wanted to bring her own civil lawsuit against
Vazquez to hold him to account for what she believes
he took from her her opportunity to birth the baby herself. Ultimately, though,
she gave up on that idea too. It seemed her
chances of success were too low for the financial costs
she'd have to expend. I spoke with a number of
(40:25):
other patients who came to the same conclusion. They feel
profoundly impacted by the clinic's closure, but their resources are limited.
They're still navigating that tense balance of time and money,
hoping to get pregnant before their biological clock runs out
for good.
Speaker 11 (40:45):
When you're talking about women and families that are spending
so much energy trying to start a family and navigate
all of the components that come with that, and navigate
the trauma all the stuff that happened. The reality is
nobody has that sort of bandwidth to go after him
in that way. I don't know what the endgame is.
Speaker 4 (41:09):
I don't know how The chapter closes.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
With no resolution in sight, Arin remains in the uncomfortable
uncertainty of not knowing how her journey to parenthood will resolve.
She made the same sacrifices familiar to any fertility patient,
and yet three years after she started at CRH, she
doesn't have her fairy tale ending. Erin has already gambled
(41:37):
so much. How many bargains can one person make?
Speaker 11 (41:42):
It's wasted time, wasted resources, wasted dreams. I mean, it's real,
real consequences.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
What Happened in Nashville is a production of School of
Humans and iHeart Podcasts, written, reported, and hosted by me
Melissa Chelson. Our producer is Etily's Perez. Our senior producer
is Amelia Brock, with additional production by Emily Seiner and
Carl Catel. Theme song by Jesse nice Swanger, Sound design,
(42:40):
scoring and mixing by Jeremy Thal and Jesse nice Swanger.
Fact checking by Savannah hugh Lee and Austin Thompson. Our
production manager is Daisy Church. Executive producers are Jason English,
Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley. If you're enjoying
the show, tell everyone you know and don't forget to
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Melissa Jeltsen
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