A Dream Destroyed

In March, a fertility clinic in Cleveland destroyed more than 4,000 frozen eggs and embryos. This is the story of the women whose hopes of motherhood were lost that day. Among the 950 patients impacted are a trio of cancer survivors who told Marie Claire in exclusive interviews about their fight for reform in a notoriously unregulated industry

- Kayla Webley Adler

INSIDE A SMALL CLOSET UNDER THE STAIRS in Rachel Mehl’s impeccably decorated two-story home in Pittsburgh sits a steel-gray garbage bag knotted at the top to conceal an infant bouncy chair that features pastel drawings and bits of well-known nursery rhymes: “Humpty Dumpty,” “Little Boy Blue,” “Hickory Dickory Dock.” Mehl bought the chair back in 2003, when her sister-in-law was pregnant; she purchased one for her niece and an extra for the child she herself hoped to have one day. “I remember my niece sitting in her chair and loving it,” says Mehl, 40. “And I thought, My baby is going to love that too.”

The chair has been with her through many life-changing events: five jobs, three boyfriends, three homes in two cities, and one cancer diagnosis. In 2016, days after her 38th birthday, Mehl learned she had an aggressive form of breast cancer, and her doctors warned that chemotherapy would likely destroy her ovaries, rendering her infertile. They gave her the option of delaying treatment—jeopardizing her survival—in order to freeze her eggs, thus preserving the chance to have a biological child in the future. For Mehl, it wasn’t even a question. “Many people know what they want to be when they grow up. Truly, my only ambition was to be a mom; it’s the only certainty I’ve ever had,” she says. “I would work jobs, but it was all just waiting until I found the guy, settled down, and had kids. I felt like that’s when my life, my dreams, would actually begin.”