Inside the strange limbo facing millions of IVF embryos

Lisa Holligan already had two children when she decided to try for another baby. Her first two pregnancies had come easily. But for some unknown reason, the third didn’t. Holligan and her husband experienced miscarriage after miscarriage. Like many other people struggling to conceive, Holligan turned to in vitro fertilization, or IVF. The fertility clinic treating Holligan was able to create six embryos using her eggs and her husband’s sperm. Genetic tests revealed that only three of these were “genetically normal. ” After the first was transferred, Holligan got pregnant. Then she experienced yet another miscarriage. But the second transfer, which took place several months later, stuck. And little Quinn, who turned four in February 2025, was the eventual happy result. Holligan, who lives in the UK, opted to donate her “genetically abnormal” embryos for scientific research. But she still has one healthy embryo frozen in storage. And she doesn’t know what to do with it. Should she and her husband donate it to another family? Destroy it? Holligan’s embryo is far from the only one in this peculiar limbo. Millions—or potentially tens of millions—of embryos created through IVF sit frozen in time, stored in cryopreservation tanks around the world. The number is only growing thanks to advances in technology, the rising popularity of IVF, and improvements in its success rates.