Jennie Garth, known for her role on “Beverly Hills, 90210,” recently shared with SELF magazine that her attempts to have a baby using in vitro fertilization (IVF) are partially to blame for the 10-month separation between Garth and her husband Dave Abrams.
Abrams, who is nine years younger than 52-year-old Garth, filed for divorced in 2018, but less than a year later, the couple was able to work things out and save their marriage. It wasn’t until now that Garth opened up about the negative effects the IVF process had on their relationship.
“[We] were trying to have a baby, and it kept failing,” she said. “And that was really, really hard on both of us individually and on our relationship.”
After several rounds of IVF proved unsuccessful, the couple decided not to focus on having children — and that, said Garth, who has three children with her ex-husband Peter Facinelli — “freed us up to love each other in a different way.”
IVF is a grueling process in which the woman receives hormone injections to increase the production of eggs before she is given a trigger shot of Human chorionic gonadotrophin (HCG), a hormone produced by the placenta, to release eggs from the follicles. A needle punctures the ovaries multiple times to suck out the eggs. Embryos are then created with the eggs, though the majority of them will not survive.
The process can be emotionally difficult for couples, particularly women. While some studies say IVF can bring couples closer together, one study of nearly 50,000 Danish women revealed that those who didn’t have a child after fertility treatments were completed were three times more likely to get divorced or end their relationship with their partner, compared to women who did have babies after fertility treatments.
Kourtney Kardashian and “Dancing with the Stars” alum Peta Murgatroyd have also shared stories of failed IVF treatments, though they were each able to conceive naturally after treatments were ceased. Success rates for IVF vary based on numerous factors, including a woman’s age.
The chances of having a baby through IVF after age 40 are just seven percent (7%) compared to women ages 38 to 40, who have a success rate of 26.8%. Women under 35 have a success rate of 55.6% with IVF. An additional factor to the success rate is that IVF is frequently used as a bandaid for underlying issues that may be causing infertility, which means the root of the problem is not being addressed at the IVF clinic. Proponents of Natural Reproductive Technolgy (NaPro) state that their methods of combating infertility (which do not involve IVF) come with a success rate as high as 81.8%.
Opponents of IVF have spoken out against the negative emotional and physical effects, the high rate of embryo destruction involved in the practice as well as the notion that the fertility industry treats women like paychecks.
