Shortly after a recent spring training outing, Carlos Rodón emerged from the Yankees’ clubhouse to find his wife, Ashley, and 4-year-old daughter, Willow, waiting for him in the tunnel beneath George M. Steinbrenner Field.
After sweating through her dad’s start in the Tampa sun, the child had turned her attention to a white and pink bunny emblazoned with a Yankees logo. Willow tossed the stuffed animal into the air — and occasionally at her unflinching mom — as she waited. But when Carlos appeared, playtime ended and she ran into her kneeling father’s arms for a hug and a kiss on the cheek.
“Children are the greatest thing on earth,” Carlos told the Daily News shortly after that. “Having a child is a blessing.”
The Rodóns consider Willow, their first born, and her siblings, Bo and Silo, to be miracles. A lot of parents say that about their kids, but the Rodóns deeply feel this way because Ashley suffered two miscarriages before Willow’s birth in July 2019.
Following those unsuccessful pregnancies, the couple began speaking with specialists for in vitro fertilization (IVF), a procedure that involves retrieving a woman’s eggs and a man’s sperm sample and combining the two in a laboratory dish. A fertilized embryo — or sometimes multiple — is then implanted into a woman’s uterus.
IVF is considered the most successful fertility treatment available, and Ashley found herself two weeks away from making an appointment to start the process when she learned she was pregnant with Willow.
IVF became unnecessary for the Rodóns, but the option gave them peace of mind. Now they’re trying to make that option, which has become a hot-button topic in the wake of a recent Alabama Supreme court ruling, more accessible for families with lesser means through The Willow Grant. The new grant is an aptly-named collaboration between The Carlos Rodón Foundation and the Nest Egg Foundation, a Connecticut-based not-for-profit that provides various funds for IVF treatment.
“People deserve to have children,” Ashley, who serves on the board of directors for both organizations, told The News. “The day that I held Willow for the first time was the best day of my life. So anytime somebody can’t do that naturally, and we’re able to use this amazing technology that was developed in the ’70s and ’80s to give them that, I think it’s important.”
Added Carlos: “The Willow Grant is something that my wife and I wanted to do for a few years. A lot of people struggle with infertility, and it’s not spoken about much. So we kind of want to bring light to it.”
The Willow Grant is a $10,000 grant for Connecticut and New York residents who have had recurrent pregnancy loss and have yet to have a child. The Rodóns call Indiana home, but they live in Connecticut during baseball season. They plan on awarding the first grant on April 5.
The Nest Egg Foundation has a selection committee and evaluation panel that essentially serves as a matchmaker between applicants and the grant. The grant, which works as a credit with fertility clinics, can be used on a cycle of IVF treatment, advanced testing of embryos, a surrogate, and related surgeries, therapies and pharmaceuticals, according to Dr. Mark P. Leondires.
Leondires, a Nest Egg founder who also directs Illume Fertility in Norwalk, Conn., told The News that a cycle of IVF can cost $12,000-$15,000, including medicine.
According to the Society for Reproductive Technology (SART), the success rate for live births via IVF is 55.6% for women under 35 years old. Leondires said that figure can vary drastically for women over 35.
Leondires also said that IVF often requires more than one embryo to produce a live birth. The rate for live births per first embryo transfer is 41.4%, per SART.
That fact is partly why a February ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court has caused such an uproar.
The court determined that frozen embryos created through IVF are children under state law, meaning Alabama fertility clinics could be held liable for disposing of surplus embryos. This ruling was reached after couples who received IVF treatment produced extra embryos, which were frozen and preserved at a hospital. In December 2020, a patient at that hospital entered a cryo-preservation unit, accessed the embryos and dropped them, thus destroying them, after coming into contact with sub-zero temperatures, per the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins.
While that was an accident, frozen embryos used for IVF don’t always survive the thawing process under routine circumstances, according to Axios. Other embryos don’t pass genetic testing or don’t have high reproductive potential, among other possible issues. Such embryos are discarded.
“The shame of the Alabama ruling is that the cumulative success rate from in vitro fertilization is dependent on creating extra frozen embryos to give each person or couple several chances at success,” Leondires explained. “And a small ball of cells is not a child. In fact, the vast majority of embryos transferred in the history of IVF have never resulted in the birth of a child.
“I will use a baseball analogy: I tell my patients it’s gonna take several times at-bat to hit the home run.”
The Alabama Legislature has passed legislation to protect patients and doctors involved with IVF since the Alabama Supreme Court ruling, but over a dozen states have introduced so-called “fetal personhood” bills, according to NBC News. Such bills are based on the idea that life starts at conception, a religious belief, particularly among some Catholics and Christians, that is disputed by scientists and medical professionals.
The idea that life starts at conception played a key role in the Supreme Court of the United States’ decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which generally protected the right to have an abortion, in June 2022. Given SCOTUS’ current conservative majority, Republicans were celebrated or blamed for that ruling, depending on one’s perspective. As such, they are now facing political backlash over bills that would endanger IVF, which Leondires stresses is a separate issue from abortion.
Leondires hopes to see passage of a federal statute that makes the practice of and access to IVF legal across the country. However, U.S. Republican senators have blocked Democratic measures to do so. Meanwhile, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, a Republican and evangelical Christian from Louisiana, has said that he supports access to IVF, but he considers this a state matter, not something Congress should legislate. However, he and other House Republicans have signed on to legislation that could threaten the use of IVF for pregnancy, per NBC News.
Asked what his message to lawmakers would be, Leondires raised a few points regarding the Nobel Prize-winning technology. He said that infertility is a widespread issue, something that impacts one in six couples. He also dismissed the idea that this is strictly a women’s issue, stating that 30-40% of infertility problems can be tied to men, with complications stemming from falling sperm counts worldwide, medications and other health problems. “Guys want to be parents, too,” he said.
Leondires also listed some other technologies that are commonly used despite being absent from religious texts.
“Why should [IVF patients] be denied access to the science and technology that their maker gave us?” he wondered. “We fly in planes and talk on cell phones. That’s not in the Bible either. So why should somebody be denied having a child based on some archaic, non-21st century science that wasn’t science? It was belief.”
Leondires, a 60-year-old white man, added, “Old white men should stay out of fertility and women’s bodies and just let people have the families they want. When their opinions affect other people’s ability to have children, I think that’s simply gone too far.”
Ashley and Carlos weren’t as pointed when asked similar questions, as they want to keep their focus on their efforts, not current events and political clashes that they can’t control. However, they have been paying close attention to the news since the Alabama ruling heightened nationwide awareness of IVF.
Asked what he would say to lawmakers looking to restrict or ignore protections, Carlos acknowledged that there is “a lot of gray area.”
“Having a child changes a lot of people’s lives,” he ultimately said, “and for those that actually want a child, it’d be hard for me to say that they can’t or say that they’re killing a person in the process of IVF. I feel like giving them a chance would be better than not giving them a chance.”
Ashley, meanwhile, noted that she has cousins who are “snowflake babies,” a term used for children who are born following the transfer of a surplus embryo produced during the in vitro fertilization of one woman to the womb of another woman who was not a cell donor.
“Our family would look very different if it weren’t for people donating embryos,” she said, adding that she believes that, in the case of IVF, conception begins at the final step, when the embryo is implanted.
Ashley understands and respects why some disagree and are opposed to IVF, but she took exception to people who “want to impose their own stance” on fertility rights.
“I think you need to give people the freedom to make their own choices,” she said, adding that she and Carlos are devoted Christians and voters, though she doesn’t consider herself to be a political person, nor does she identify with either major party. “My religion is important to me, and I see things through that lens all the time.”
But, she added, “I don’t think God ever intended to be a dictator or to dictate what people do with their lives.”
Ashley noted that freewill is mentioned in the Bible, and she referenced Revelation 3:20, where God says he will stand at the door and knock.
“If you don’t answer him, he’s not going to kick the door down,” Ashley said. “And so it’s just sad that people kind of really want to try to use their faith to take everything that people do, because we’re all just trying to live happy, fulfilled lives. For a lot of people, that’s having a family.”
Because of that thinking, Ashley and Carlos don’t have a hard time separating their faith from their mission to provide IVF access to those in need. They simply see a procedure that offered them comfort at a trying time in their lives, and they want to help others access it through The Willow Grant.
“I just want women to be able to protect their fertility rights fiercely, and without fear, because everyone deserves to have a family,” Ashley said. “I just want to see people get to become parents, and I’m excited that we’re in a position to help give people that hope.”
