What happens to the human embryos that are never chosen?

Emma Waters has spent years asking that question. A researcher at the Heritage Foundation and the author of the forthcoming book, Rethinking Fertility, she joins Dear Jane to talk about the 1.5 million frozen embryos currently in storage across the United States, human beings suspended in time, some for decades, and the fertility industry that created them with fragmented regulatory oversight.

Emma breaks down how genetic screening allows parents to test embryos for everything from Down syndrome to IQ, personality traits, and male pattern baldness, selecting which lives continue and which are destroyed. She also covers a federal class action lawsuit filed in California in 2025, where a woman destroyed her last remaining embryos based on a 98% reliability statistic that  ...