By Chris Jennewein
Times of San Diego
SAN DIEGO — Rep. Sara Jacobs, the second youngest woman in Congress at 32, told CNN is an interview published Saturday that she is freezing her eggs this week to concentrate for now on her political career.
“This is the right choice for me right now. I love serving in Congress and I know I want to start a family someday,” she told CNN. “There are many different ways to start a family and we need to make sure that everyone can have the options to make the choice that is best for them.”
Jacobs, who represents the 53rd District in central San Diego County, said she is sharing her story “to help destigmatize the process, encourage other people to speak openly about their path to parenthood, and highlight the need for legislation to expand access to fertility treatments and reproductive care. ”
In her interview with CNN’s Daniella Diaz, Jacobs emphasized the need for financial accessibility to fertility treatments, and the importance of choices for all prospective parents.
“We need to be able to talk about fertility, reproductive health, and how there’s still very little work life balance in this country,” Jacobs said. “Thinking about when you want to have kids, the barriers or problems you might face at work, the right timing — these are real conversations that people, especially women, are having all the time.”
Jacobs said that for too long workplace culture has been based around “men who had someone else doing most of the caregiving.”
Jacobs is a cosponsor of the Access to Infertility Treatment and Care Act, a bicameral bill to expand health insurance coverage of infertility services and treatment. The legislation would require most private plans, as well as Medicaid, TRICARE, and the VA, to cover fertility treatments without raising insurance or copayment costs, and would expand coverage for fertility preservation measures, like egg freezing.
The popularity of fertility preservation treatments have increased dramatically in the last decade and reporting by Time shows that in 2020 egg freezing and other procedures continued to rise in popularity during the pandemic. .
*
Chris Jennewein is editor of Times of San Diego, with which San Diego Jewish World shares stories under auspices of the San Diego Online News Association.