Representative Sara Jacobs, Democrat of California, spent much of the August congressional recess on a fertility-drug-induced physical and emotional roller coaster.
“It was like puberty, menopause and pregnancy all together,” Ms. Jacobs recounted in an interview last week, sitting on a couch in her office. “I was getting hot flashes; my boobs hurt; I gained a ton of weight; I got pimples.”
They were unpleasant side effects of her decision, at 36, to spend part of her summer break freezing her eggs. That meant taking estrogen pills, giving herself shots, having daily blood work and ultrasound monitoring, and ultimately having 11 eggs retrieved by her doctor — all while exercising restraint in not responding to the mean comments she read about her body online.
Ms. Jacobs said her experience trying to plan for a future pregnancy inspired her to write legislation that would expand military health care coverage of fertility treatments for service members and their dependents. She hopes to attach the measure to the annual defense policy bill the House will take up this week.
And it convinced her that discussing what she has gone through — even if it involves talking about sore breasts and her own menstrual cycle — would help her colleagues in Congress, a vast majority of whom are older and male, produce better women’s health policy.
“This is the third-oldest Congress in history,” she said. “We can’t make good policy if my colleagues don’t understand how these things work.”
When Republicans won a governing trifecta in Washington last year, Ms. Jacobs, who is unmarried and has a boyfriend, thought being in the minority would be the perfect time to get pregnant.
Not so much.
“Turns out, it’s the busiest I’ve ever been in this job,” she said. “I represent a border community that is really under threat. Every day, there is something we need to respond to. For me, it doesn’t feel like the right choice to do anything but this.”
So instead of attempting to have a baby right away, Ms. Jacobs decided to freeze another batch of eggs. The procedure is an expensive but increasingly popular option for women who want to delay childbirth to an age at which it would be more difficult to become pregnant without medical intervention.
Ms. Jacobs froze her first batch of eggs four years ago, but her doctor advised her to freeze more if she wanted to increase her chances of having children after 40. She said she considered it a way to ensure that as a young woman in office, she could have it all — just maybe not all at the same time.
“There’s this stigma that egg freezing is this sad thing you have to do,” Ms. Jacobs said. “I feel like it’s empowering. I’m taking agency in my life. I’m making the right decision for myself.”
Ms. Jacobs had pushed earlier this year to allow for proxy voting for new parents, in part because she wanted to become a mother while continuing to do her job. Republicans killed that measure, giving her another reason to put off a pregnancy. Representing California and commuting across the country twice a week made it too difficult to contemplate adding a baby to the mix, she said.
“I fly six hours twice a week,” she said. “At some point in your pregnancy, you have to stop flying. I don’t want to leave my constituents unrepresented.”
Ms. Jacobs, one of the wealthiest members of Congress, whose grandfather was an early technology entrepreneur, said she paid about $30,000 out of pocket to freeze her eggs. She did not have an official diagnosis of infertility, meaning the procedure was not covered by her insurance.
The cost was one reason she decided to write the legislation that she is proposing to add to the defense measure, which would provide coverage for treatments like egg freezing and in vitro fertilization for military personnel and their dependents.
“If you are having fertility challenges, you have three options: Forgo having a family, pay thousands of dollars out of pocket or leave the military and go get a job in the private sector that covers this,” Ms. Jacobs said. “None are options we want for our service members.”
A similar measure was included in last year’s defense policy bill but removed in final negotiations at the insistence of Speaker Mike Johnson. Ms. Jacobs said she hoped it would survive this year, in part to pressure private insurers to begin covering fertility treatments for everyone.
“We’re asking people to deploy in their prime reproductive years and be away from their partner,” she said. “I have to imagine that the chemicals we’re exposing them to are not good for fertility. We see military families have higher rates of infertility than average families.”
Ms. Jacobs has not relished her fertility journey, which, while exceedingly unusual for a member of Congress, is fairly common for childless women in their 30s. She even speculated that Taylor Swift, the 35-year-old pop star who recently announced her engagement to the football player Travis Kelce, had likely frozen her eggs.
“She’s talked about wanting to have kids, and we’re the exact same age,” she said of Ms. Swift. “She definitely has.”
Ms. Jacobs said such topics were rarely broached in the corridors of the Capitol.
“This is what our friend group talks about, and yet you wouldn’t know it by the conversation here,” she said. “It’s as if it doesn’t happen.”
Annie Karni is a congressional correspondent for The Times. She writes features and profiles, with a recent focus on House Republican leadership.
The post Juggling Congress and Life, She Opted to Freeze Her Eggs appeared first on New York Times.
