Life Uncut - Flash backs and Britt's frozen embryos

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

Hey Lifers, It's been a Taylor Swift filled weekend! Both of us attended and had a freaking incredible time! We take a surprise walk down memory lane and flashback to Nov 2022. Hindsight is an interesting place to be looking back on a budding love story! We spoke about sliding in to Linked in DMs on last week's Ask Uncut and today we revisit it with more opinions and a little shift in perspective! Plus we speak about the recent changes in Alabama that classify embryos as children and the repercussions of these changes. Britt shares her personal experience with freezing embryos and how devastating it can be when that process doesn't go as planned. If you have an question please send it on it to life uncut podcast on Instagram hereJoin us on tiktok Or join the facebook group here Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! xxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Life Uncut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country whose lands were never ceded. We pay our respects to their elders past and present. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. This episode was recorded on Darug Walamutta land. Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. I'm Brittany and I am on the biggest come down. People are calling it PTSD post Taylor Swift down, which I don't think you can relate to. I don't know.

I don't know if you can. I think we'll get cancelled for that. I went to Taylor Swift last night. I know. I know, Laura, you went Friday night. It was. Calm down. The best night of my life.

Calm down. It was the best night of my life. Do you know, okay, there's two types of people in the world right now. They're Brittany and the Laura. No, no, there's people who have been to Taylor Swift, so they understand this. Yeah. And then there's people who haven't and they're sick of hearing about it. and they're the only two types of people that exist at the moment,

people who are totally over it. Well, sorry, for the next 30 seconds you guys are going to hear me say it was the best night of my life. And people who will never, ever. You look like you're fingering something. Why? Who talks like this? I was giving you the one and the two.

Didn't you like the two? You were literally looking at me. She's looking at me like she's got two fingers here, like she's fingering something. She's like. Okay, so for context, Brit went last night and so she's rolled in today still with the sequins and shit in her hair. I've got the beads in my hair still because I was really feeling like I didn't want to let it go yet

this era of my life. What is the era? The Brittany Taylor Swift era. I went on Friday night and now it's Monday I'm over the hump I'm over the hump of the high it was incredible it was amazing it was everything that I expected it to be from everybody else's hype that I had kind of you know seen witnessed and experienced but it was phenomenal. It was better than I expected I can say so i went to taylor swift i think 2018 when she was here for reputation tour so i had seen her before i know she's amazing and i knew this show was going to be incredible but it exceeded expectations it was 10 times bigger and better than her reputation tour like her reputation tour was amazing but this was just i just don't know of another artist in the world that would

put on a show for four hours non-stop with the effects that she has the screens the choreography the dance she did not stop singing she was never puffed like everything was incredible i just i cannot fault it i was puffed and i was literally just standing on the spot jumping up same when i left i need a water break when i left i had flats on i was like i'm exhausted my back hurts my feet hurt and then i was like imagine taylor doing that for three years i know four hours a night four nights in a row then she travels and she does it again for three years and I was just from jumping my my arms are sore like I've done a workout from fist pumping I fist pumped for three hours and this morning I was like why am I triceps so short well this is apparently why

she runs on a treadmill for two hours and sings the whole time like for her cardio I think she's just incredible it was okay it was a very well-oiled machine in terms of concert and Britt and I were just comparing notes as well because obviously went to separate ones if you went to the concert you guys are going to know the moment we're talking about but it was like there was this one moment where she was sitting on her piano and everyone was screaming and I was like yeah she did the same thing at the concert that I went to so I feel like even though everyone screams the whole time anyway no but there's this I mean there was this really like amazing profound moment which was sitting at the moss covered piano and everyone was absolutely losing it for an extended period of

time and she's basking in that moment of screaming and it to me I would think the thing that I was most impressed by was how well oiled the machine was like every single thing she did on stage she knew she was going to do that thing on stage you know it's absolutely it's scripted it's ready to go and she can roll it out for the next night and get the same type of response which is incredible okay i just feel like i need to have a sit down with taylor i'm on the fence with travis kelsey i was really pro travis kelsey like i was like okay great you've got this new different kind of love that you've never experienced you're not hiding anymore now you don't like the guy what did he do he gave you the ick yeah because you know what he did what a dickhead like you've got

taylor swift the most beautiful young intelligent rich amazing humble girlfriend and you public he flew out of australia allegedly he allegedly flew out of australia yesterday he flew in for like one show whatever flew back straight away and straight away he's been photographed gone straight to a strip club surrounded by women like photos have gone everywhere in the last 24 hours was he at a strip club or just at a club i think i said allegedly it's a strip club i know i think you're conflating two articles i think you didn't hear the stories here first because i think we're gonna get ourselves in trouble i'm pretty sure he just went to a nightclub and he was photographed with women and then there was another article saying that taylor swift has banned him from

strip clubs i think they're two separate why do you ban someone from strip clubs i just don't believe in the shit that you read brett i don't believe it for a second i'm allowed to talk about Taylor's love life and I just think I want her to be in love so bad but a week ago I was like they're gonna get married and now I'm like I think he's gonna be too bad for her reputation and her image which she looks after so well and I think he's gonna be detrimental to that so I reckon she's gonna oh my god imagine the album I know they break up I'm ready for it oh my god all this all the fun that was not intentional make it stop make it stop okay the only thing I do want to say before we round out the Taylor Swift commentary because I know like I said

so many of you are sick of it what I thought was very very cool and something that I have not seen at any other concert we all know how sick I was for blink 182 the thing I thought was so cool about this is that not only does Taylor Swift have the nostalgia piece because she's been around now for so long making music but she also is relating to such a young audience so there were so many mums there with their teenage or little tween daughters like there was one mum sitting in front of us she had her seven-year-old her 10-year-old and her 12-year-old with her and the four of them were there together and all of them were Swifties and that I think is and the mum yeah totally because the mum was like just a little bit older than me and she had these tween kids and so all

of them loved it and I think that that's what's so cool about it is that she's created music that's transcended two separate generations she doesn't have a demographic she does not have a demographic her demographic is literally everyone men women kids adults grandparents it's actually incredible but it's also how the way in which she's made things that are technically uncool cool and I say this by so one of the things that was quite awesome about the concert right you go to like a Beyonce concert or you go to pink or you go to literally any other very successful female pop star often a lot of the show a lot of the performance will be based around what's sexy right like you'll have dancers on stage very scantily clad shaking their asses I mean that's

the way twerking became like a whole thing and then here at this Taylor Swift concert that's commanded 95,000 people in a room or 81,000 whatever the number was in Sydney you've got all these dancers on stage doing ballroom dancing like they were dressed in full ballroom doing this like beautiful waltz it's just the contrast between what you would expect a modern pop star to be and the way in which she presented on stage and it's this like things that are deemed as kind of like uncool or cool again and I think it's the inclusivity of it that makes it like something that's quite remarkable she has made uncool cool uncle cool and be cringe lean into the glitter be like a big loser with your friends and that's cool again the friendship bracelets like since

when is it cool for people to like make their little bangles and then go and swap them with people but everyone did it yeah I had one of our lifers actually give me a bracelet they made for me that said I found my penguin and it's really it's really really cute so I had like hundreds of bracelets on my arm I made one and then I wore it and gave it to my daughter and it says pretty titty. Yeah. Laura goes, made your bracelet. Didn't give it to me. The whole idea is you give your friends your bracelet. I made a pretty titty bracelet and then Molly saw it and she really wanted it. And so now she's wearing pretty titty. Well, I was like swapping bracelets with people in the audience and I was like, you can't have that one. Cause it was like my family penguin

from a live bar. So I was like, I think I broke the friendship rules with the bracelets, but I didn't let anyone take that. But even that, I mean, it's leaning into female friendships. It's leaning into prioritizing the things that we often deprioritize, like going out, having a girl's night, spending time with your closest friends and having something that is very, I mean, on one hand, very cool, but on another hand, very, very deeply dorky to lean into. I was talking to producer Keisha about this. And it's so interesting because there are so many dads and men at Taylor Swift because they're either fans themselves or they're there with their daughters, their children. They're like, they're like, let's go bond. Let's go family bond. And it was the exact same thing

that we saw at the Superbowl. Like there are so many dads and men now that are bonding with their daughters or females in their life that couldn't have given two hoots about the Super Bowl and the football you know six months ago and now they're so involved like the viewership of American football and Super Bowl and the amount of money that Taylor Swift has brought in single-handedly to that industry is insane so you're seeing this unity and this bonding in both aspects and it's so beautiful to see yeah but on the flip side of that all the staunch footballers being angry about the fact that it's changed football but also I do wonder what the impact will be if they break up I'll be disaster it would be a disaster yeah and he'll become the most hated man in America that's

the thing yeah I don't think he realizes what will happen to him yeah if they go through a breakup yeah the vilification he'll have to go into hiding all right well producer Keisha you have been talking about this surprise that you have for us you refuse to tell us what it is you refuse to give us a hint. Yeah. Both of you have tried to get out of me what this is. I text you last week because look, I think hindsight can be a very interesting thing. And we got a message to our Instagram last week from a wonderful listener named Molly. And I can't read you exactly what she said because I asked her to delete the messages because I didn't want you guys reading it ahead of time because I wanted to surprise you on the podcast. So Molly was listening to

an episode that we recorded back in November of 2022. It's the week after you got married, Laura. and it was a part of suck and sweet and she just said this is so funny now listening to this episode knowing how things have transpired so this is what went down in november 2022 suck and sweet my sweet for the week is i'm still no crushing i'm already no i'm crushing hard no look i'm feeling my breasts okay i am gonna tell you that this is a disaster waiting to happen britney you always veto me yep and i'm always correct this one maybe i need some support every now and again laura there has been some that i've been supported this new one this is a bad idea britney hockley and you know i cannot believe that we have a dating and relationship podcast and after

three years you are still entertaining this relationship firstly firstly you know i have an attraction to people that aren't here yeah because i'm commitment phobe i know that's not a red flag because i know it i also want to make this very clear to everybody listening to this this is i'm not being the hard-ass best friend yes you are if you knew all the details around this which you don't but if you did you would come and smack britney and say you are being such a naughty little girl do not try and entertain this you tell you don't like you're a naughty little girl that he doesn't live in this country yep see to me turn on oh for fuck's sake that he's physically not here turn on that you only knew him for two days and now you're in love with him

i'm not in love with him i'm in lust with him it was three days and we've been speaking for a long time now of course on social media i can't guys okay okay my stuff for the week is that britney never learns she never learns from her mistakes and i'm so tired three years of being the responsible one it's too much you're tired but let's be real i'm giving you content that's all i need and i'm learning slowly it's not a sprint it's a marathon it's a marathon to be fair it worked out quite well for you laura this time this is the worst idea you've ever had i mean very good now we're it's in a very good place that was actually very funny to listen to fucking hell also like for anyone going back through the trenches we don't know what we said

i don't know who i was two years ago i don't remember that i also can't be held to account for anything i said two years ago i'm a different person no i still back you i still think you were right i think it's just the rare what do you mean she thinks she was right i'm in love i'm so glad it's worked out the way that it has i'm so glad that you're happy and i love ben i love that you guys are together but if you ever if you guys don't work out and you come to me and you're like Don't put that pressure on me. So I met a guy. He's in Ireland and I'm just going to see where things go.

I will feel the same. I met a guy that actually is taking a solo scientific position in Antarctica and I think it's going to go well. There's no Wi-Fi there. But there are a lot of penguins. And I've only seen him for one day. I think his name is Steve. I don't know.

But I'm feeling good about it. Guys, sometimes you need the best friend in your life who tells you. Does she know you? No, I never did. oh that was really went somewhere oh sorry we're talking about something else no sometimes you need the best friend in your life who is the voice of reason even if you don't listen to them if i listened to you laura where do you think i would be dating someone in sydney on the street somewhere with some hooligan no look i mean i'm i am very happy to admit that i was wrong in this instance

well yeah because now i've transitioned from lust to love you already loved him then it was three days and you were so like you never took your face out of your phone trying to have a conversation with brit she'd be like yeah i'm listening i was like you're texting ben aren't you you're texting this guy yeah give me your phone i'm gonna smack him as well no i don't fall in love in three days but like wow that was a great three days i just had a the memory just really hit me that was the three days we didn't hear from you we thought you died almost did rest in peace oh shit okay guys if you're listening back to the back catalog of life uncut and you can find some other gems send them on through really just please do i like a little

i need the walk down memory lane i want to be held accountable for all the things i've said wrong what's the time frame you know in the court of law how there's like a time period that you can't be held accountable for something statutory statutory i don't know but i always bring it Britt always tells me it's wrong. And then we've had lawyers. Because you make laws up all the time. Ten years. Ten years, guys.

After ten years, you can't be held accountable. Double jeopardy. What do you think our whatever the burden is? Statutory limit of whatever time. Statutory limitations. Something like that. What should ours be for life uncut? How long can we be held accountable for thoughts, opinions,

or advice that we give on Ask Uncut? I don't think we can put that down because someone will hold us accountable for what we've just said. Is it like a return policy? 28 days? You've got to have proof of receipt. you know the funniest thing I remember about that time is that for some reason that day and this never happens you Laura producer Keisha and Maddie J were at my house because we had some random

recording and it was this was the three days the first day I met Ben and I was like hey you guys were about to go and I was already linking up this guy as this guy was coming over and instead of ushering you out the door quickly I was like hey guys just procrastinate for a minute because this guy I'm banging is coming over and I want you to see him because I just thought like I just thought I was going to show him off like my little prized possession for the day and I was never seeing the guy again so I made you all wait around the poor guy Ben walked in thinking it was just me and I was like oh god it was everyone I was like guys can you go what I asked you to stay to look at him and then I was like guys this is awkward please leave I'm trying like it's not cool your

exact words were you need to stay he's so fucking hot you've got to see this and so I just remembered why we were there it was because we were recording the episode about your wedding yeah that's why matt was there and matt was there as well and it's not like ben subtle he's like six foot four or something like this big tall handsome man just walks through the door and the three of us are sitting there like hello and he was mortified i was like i'm so sorry they're hanging around like a bad smell no i don't remember you saying like oh i couldn't get rid of them i think you like oh the record ran over sorry about that i don't know i made up something because i just wanted i just wanted because i thought i was never seeing him again

And so I thought it would be really cool for my world to collide and also in my head I was like content, like this hot guy that I banged, at least you guys have seen him. And then obviously here we are. Obviously he became the love of your life and we didn't think that things would go that way based off of past experiences, which is why at the time I was on Laura's side going, you're being a good friend by telling her the truth.

You're giving her the tough love and she needs it. Were you on Laura's side, Keisha? Yeah. Most people were except for the odd lifer who would message me and say you're being so mean to britney she's in love you should just be happy like i cannot tell you the amount of you guys the listeners who messaged me privately to tell me that i needed to be nicer to brit about you being in a new relationship and i was like everyone everyone let's just take a step back i just did covid with brit in another country running around after a

love and then i watched her be heartbroken decimated on the floor and now that's a shit on the floor well you were you were literally no that's defecating it's not decimated and then and now out of nowhere you've told me you've fallen in love with a guy who you banged for two nights on raya if you banged him for two nights you would have loved him too and then you've gone overseas and i was like guys anyone who thinks i shouldn't be saying you know brit i love you but i'm worried is actually insane also and i'm not saying i am so happy it has worked out and i will absolutely be in the wrong but to anyone who messaged me i love you but go and fuck yourself you should be a better friend to your friends

also ben love ben too ben listens to this sorry i know he does i know i know but i want the best for you and i was trying to protect you he actually said you know when you start dating somebody and you become like obsessed with everything about them you look at their like that wears off but you know but i mean like you want to know everything about someone so obviously he read our book Laura We Love Love he just started reading the whole book and then he listened to every episode of the podcast so he was listening to us talking about those times and he was like why does Laura not like me and I was like oh here we go and he had it he was convinced that you didn't like him nah I was just I was playing hard to get I was like I hold higher standards for

Brittany than what she holds for herself that's how I felt at the time my standard was pretty high Ben proved himself I just don't want to see you get hurt again that's all it was this jack hammering slow down message why are we rushing good all day why are we rushing we've got 28 hours thank you for that okay memory lane can i say off the back of that something i wanted to bring up quickly it's something we spoke about on ask uncut last week and it was you mentioned linkedin and my brain went ping ping ping ping we had this question that happened and it was around so this girl she'd met a guy he'd said he didn't have social media she tried to find him on social media couldn't find him and then she asked the question as to whether or not she should message

him on linkedin because she found his linkedin profile but he didn't have social media now brit you and i speaking of the time of whatever the word is statutory that's not it it's not it our own statutory limitation i think double jeopardy i think it's longer than four days but we said on that episode that it was fine you should you should go you should message shoot your shot one more time or at least one time and then see what happens you're retracting your statement no i'm not retracting our statement but we put up the social video of that on life on cart live on car podcast on instagram and the overarching comments there were so many but there was like i would say more than 99 of people had said don't message him and the reasoning for that was that

they were saying if you met him in real life if he made a point of saying he doesn't have social media he also then had the opportunity to give you his number or give you another way of contacting him but he just left it with a blockage of saying i don't have those things and then went on his merry way so majority of people interpreted that situation as though well look he's already given you the indication he's not interested in you why would you message him on linkedin i still don't agree with that great disagree with everyone on instagram no sorry okay what i will say is there are numerous times people meet each other in real life and don't swap numbers or nothing happens because they just don't a expect that that's the situation they don't think the other person will

be interested this happens more times or they're nervous more times than not people's safety net is unfortunately online even lifers right how many times i've had messages from lifers say that i saw you literally hey i just saw you 10 minutes ago but i didn't want to say hi so I messaged you and in my head I was like but say hi like you must have just been around the corner from where I was right now because you've jumped straight on your phone yeah to say hi online because you feel more comfortable and I understand that and I think that that relates to a lot of people in today's dating scene the worst thing that can happen if you like if you don't shoot this shot right it's not like you've messaged him on Instagram and he's left you

unread you've blocked him and it's not like he gave you his number and he's blocked you and then you're like, I'm going to try LinkedIn. I've got his address. I'm turning up. Like this is just your one reach out. I think it's fine. If you don't shoot your shot, if you don't ask and you're not, you're not writing to him and proposing marriage. If he says no, he will politely decline in whatever capacity, no skin off your back. You walk away and it's fine, but maybe there's a chance he will reply and it might be something. And maybe that situation just wasn't right. Can I just say, you guys have not changed at all since 2022. You're still the dreamer and you're still the realist i am i you're the dreamer who's like shoot your shot take your chance and

laura's like here are the factors you need to be realistic about this could have happened like things have not changed as much as what we think they are no and i'm not a pessimist i'm just a realist but also i'm with you brit i just thought it was interesting i thought it was really interesting the way in which people interpreted that on social media because overarchingly the number of comments on there were all saying don't do it and i think it's interesting when we give our advice and feedback on Ask Uncut episodes and then the majority says no, which in this case was the instance. What I want to leave you with is when have we ever let you down?

Brittany's like, what I want to leave you with is I'm always right. Don't listen to Laura. What I want to leave you with. Go chase the footballer who lives in another country. Sure. Good, sometimes it works out. Sure, sometimes. We'll see.

Sometimes. I haven't got a ring yet. but something we wanted to talk about on this episode is the very real life handmaid's tale like it's unbelievable what is going down in alabama at the moment so so many of you would be familiar with the conversations that happened around roe v wade being overturned and how fertility abortion rights ivf all of these discussions were then handed over to the states within America. We spoke about Roe v. Wade when that happened back in 2022. But now there's been more changes and more advances in Alabama. So what has happened is the Alabama Supreme Court

has ruled that frozen embryos created and stored for in vitro fertilization are children under a state law which is allowing parents to sue for wrongful death of their minor children. Now the reason why this ruling has come to light is because it's all off the back of a civil suit that started in 2020 so there was an incident where three separate couples embryos were destroyed but it's actually quite devastating what happened and what seems to have kind of gone down is that a patient went in and was able to access the freezers which god knows how you even do that but that's a whole nother story it's insanity right but they've accessed the freezers they've been able to handle the frozen embryos of other people's families and they have dropped them so

what it says in the court documents is that the person got freezer burns when they handled these embryos they dropped the petri dishes they smashed on the floor because they said like minus 80 degrees yeah and they destroyed three families embryos so this was taken as a civil suit originally for what's called wrongful death of a minor and originally it was overturned in court because a frozen embryo can't be considered a minor and that was the original ruling now this was then taken further than that. It was taken to the Supreme Court where that original ruling was overturned. And the Supreme Court in Alabama has since defined that a frozen embryo is considered to be a child, that a child is from the moment of fertilization, whether that is in the womb

or externally. Frozen, whatever. Which brings so many more questions. And the reason why this is such a, I mean, it's such a landmark case, but also the reason why it is now fraught with so many problems is that it raises questions around IVF in general around the moral liability of IVF clinics and what they do with those embryos around the long-term storage of embryos and frozen because it means you can't destroy an embryo you can't do anything to that that would then potentially hold you liable for this wrongful death and it also means that some of these clinics could come under what would be considered criminal charges for the way in which they're handling embryos It's completely changed the benchmark for how IVF can be handled within the state of Alabama.

And then I guess the big thing is, is Alabama is only one of 11 states who have these similar rulings post Roe v. Wade. And so it begs the question, is this going to be ruled out across the country? I had a little look into Alabama wrongful death, and this is what it says. The party responsible for the death could be charged with a criminal offense. And if convicted, they could face fines jail time and other penalties although a criminal conviction could provide the family with some sense of closure it does not compensate them for their loss so currently these families are trying to sue but technically what this means is if you are convicted of wrongful death you could face a prison sentence this could be off the back of

literally freezing five embryos and then for whatever reason deciding not to use all or some end all one maybe it could be one embryo maybe you have an embryo that didn't develop properly and had some sort of genetic abnormalities and you decide you don't want to go further for whatever reason or maybe you're not allowed to go further for whatever reason that could also be seen as wrongful death well you would still have to keep it frozen forever almost or like indefinitely because what do you do you can't discard it if it's considered to be a child i do not know what the repercussions and the future is going to look like in that capacity but what i do know is the effect that this is going to have on women in alabama and hopefully

it doesn't go any further than alabama yeah the repercussions are so astronomical both the financial stress and the emotional stress that that is going to put on a woman even trying to make the decision if she should go forth with ivf because imagine the stress you already have doing ivf but then on top of that you're like holy shit what if something goes wrong and i end up in prison. See, I mean, that for me, I understand when you say, think about all the people who are considering this, but at least the people who are considering IVF in Alabama have the choice to potentially consider it somewhere else. Now that these legislations have come in, the people who I think are in the most gravest of situations are women who have already been

through the embryo freezing process. So they already have 10 or 15 or whatever it is, embryos that are frozen. And now they could be criminally liable for those embryos. The big question that they have is what are they going to do with that? Do you then wait until you've hit menopause and then have, I mean, go through the very costly task of having eggs inserted into you then knowing that they are not going to take, do you keep them frozen indefinitely, which means that you're paying storage fees for forever? I mean, the other big question though here is, is if you legally have to keep those eggs frozen, does the state not have some responsibility of financial reimbursement? And we were having this discussion

just as we were unpacking the many complexities of this and we were like well if you are outlaying a cost for what is considered to be a child even though that child is frozen and currently in a freezer in an IVF clinic does that not mean that that child is a dependent that embryo is a dependent on you so therefore wouldn't there be some sort of tax like benefits that you could get back in order to be able to pay for the freezing there's just so many complications around this and the fact that the law has changed in such a swift nature it means that so many women and families are going to be put in this precarious situation where it could be criminally liable i don't understand how you can change a law and then backdate it it's like saying on a lesser level

imagine somebody brings in and says jaywalking in the city center is now uh one year fine from this day like this is when the legislation is brought in so let's go back through all our cctv footage for the last 10 years and see who jaywalked and then we're going to put you in prison for a year like you can't backdate a law yeah i know but i disagree with that and the reason why i disagree with that as an example is that they're not backdating the law what they're saying is that we now are clarifying and we are classifying any embryo any frozen embryo as a child life and so it doesn't matter that it's backdated they're not going to say hey well because you last year destroyed your embryos we're going to criminally charge you now what they're saying is

any that are now on ice need to be treated alongside these new legislations yes but you make a decision on the education at that time they made a decision to freeze not knowing there could be a possibility that they're going to be charged they probably wouldn't have made that exact decision if there was more information at the time well that's my problem yes but that is the whole thing that people are facing now that's why this is just such an incredibly like overwhelming moral debate but I guess the real problem here is like because religion and politics have been conflated now within the states and that's what happened when reproductive rights was given back to the states to make their independent decisions and there was a really interesting so like

when this new ruling happened the amendments this is what was written the people of Alabama have declared the public policy of this state to be that unborn human life is sacred we believe that each human being from the moment of conception is made in the image of God created by him to reflect his likeness. It is as if the people of Alabama took what was spoken of the prophet Jeremiah and applied it to every unborn person in this state. It is unbelievable to me that from a Western, like a Westernized country, I understand that there are many countries throughout the world where politics and religion are so intertwined, but for a country like America to have it so deeply intertwined that it affects women in this way. It is almost unfathomable how many steps

backwards have been taken in this. You said this earlier in the chat, Laura, you can go somewhere else to another state for IVF. Sure, of course you can go to another state for IVF, but the extra expense that takes to move to another state to do your treatment is huge because you don't just duck over go into the clinic put your embryo in high five and go home it takes weeks of injections and blood tests and ultrasounds so you would have to move to that place for whatever period of time you need depending on your IVF needs you would have to stay in that place do all of your injections there and it's so timed that you can't just keep going between states right sometimes it's every day for people sometimes it's every two days every three days whatever well it's going to be a

situation where only the most privileged and only the most financially like wealthy people are going to be able to access this type of IVF treatment because I mean it's not what's happening now is that a lot of clinics within Alabama have paused their embryo freezing facilities but you can still go in have eggs taken and have IVF done without doing the freezing portion of the embryos you can have your your eggs frozen you can have embryos created instantly but it just means that what is going to happen is that people are going to have to do more rounds of IVF. They're going to have to outlay that initial cost more times. And in the States for an IVF treatment, it's even more than what it is in Australia. It's 15 to 20,000 to have one round of IVF. It is more there and

they don't get any form of rebates or government help where there are forms of rebates in Australia. Which I think the most devastating part of this whole thing is that families who can't conceive naturally are so penalized. I haven't spoken about this on the podcast yet, but now seems like a very, very perfect time. I did speak about this at one live show at the Sydney live show very briefly. But last year, you guys know, you've been on my fertility journey for a very long time. This has been years now. I'm 36 years old. I'll be 37 in August. And I've been freezing my eggs a few times. And then I realized that I probably need to freeze embryos if I do want to have a child. And that is just not my own realization. This is from many discussions with my IVF doctor

and just the research that's available for my fertility and my results. I don't have great fertility. I never got a huge number of eggs. And every time I went back, they got less and less and less. So I made the decision, I should say we made the decision, Ben and I, to freeze embryos last year which was a pretty big decision and I didn't take it lightly and it might seem like to a lot of people that that came really quickly in our relationship but I think relationships develop at different times the older you get and sometimes when there's an external pressure like a biological clock and like the extra fertility stress you do make decisions why and I know the reason to this but I think for the context of people listening who have because like everyone who is a lifer has

followed along so much around the egg freezing conversations that we've had but why didn't you want to share sooner that you had frozen embryos because that is such a big monumental thing from like a relationship perspective but also from a fertility conversation that you left out of the original talks that we had it's funny I because I do share everything on the podcast and well most things and we've always said we don't share everything but I always had this feeling because Laura and I had these discussions are you going to talk about this that you're doing it yeah and I and I said that's kind of what made the last round of egg freezing such a big deal and I said no I don't think I'm going to I think and I guess in a way I I told a bit of a fib to you guys what

wasn't a fib but it was a bend of a trick of the truth I said I was just doing another egg freezing round which it is right it takes out the eggs but I didn't tell you that I was making those eggs in into an embryo because it felt highly personal and it was very personal to Ben as well and I didn't want to talk about it because I was worried about the result and I didn't want to be going through if it didn't work or something went wrong I didn't want everyone to know that I was going through it and then have to talk about the fact that it didn't work and this was just a preconceived idea right like everybody that I know in my life that has done embryos I didn't know many people that hadn't ever gotten them I never assumed that I wouldn't get embryos but I was just worried that

something could go wrong and then I had already laid all the information out there and you guys knew and then I would have to talk about it whilst I was going through something so I was like let's just see what happens and then I'll talk about it after the fact like I just want to get through this as stress-free as possible because the number one thing is you don't stress that's what your fertility doctor says which is so funny in hindsight because you're like this is very stressful do you okay this is a very personal question and you don't have to answer this you don't want to do you or have you thought about and I'm relating it back to this conversation with Alabama right what if something happens where you and Ben don't work out in the way that you

plan you know whatever that is and you have embryos that are frozen what do you do that's the other pressure so Ben and I we only made this decision because we at this point in time we know and I feel even bad saying that we want to marry each other we want to be together and I always say this point in time because I almost feel like I'm buffering it for myself in case it goes south in the future because we all know relationships are a funny thing but it is a pressure you do think about it because it is in a way a child it's not alive but is your dna and his dna and you've made it and it's ready to become a child so it's really it's such a funny thing and this is why i relate with this conversation so much but you go through so many conversations with

the clinic and with each other about what that looks like whether you can donate them or if one of you dies do you give permission for the other person to use it do you want nobody to use it do you want science to have it do you donate it to a friend like there are so many and so you go through and I won't tell you exactly I did say that my sister could use them if my eggs sorry my sister can use my eggs and then I said if I die my sister can use my embryos with Ben's permission so you fill out so many different scenarios which sounds crazy but makes sense but when I went through it so I did it twice last year and when I went through it the first time when I said I didn't want to talk about in case something went wrong I feel like that was the best decision for me

because something did go wrong and I I had it in my head that I was definitely going to come out with an embryo because why wouldn't you you know you paid so much money and it's science it's and I'm such a science woman so I'm like okay I'm doing every single thing I can possibly do to get an embryo. So it's going to be fine. And I got, I did get a few embryos and what happens is they develop the embryo. And then over a six day period, it's pretty amazing. It's like CCTV footage. They put these little embryos in their little Petri dish. And there's literally a camera that monitors them. These are microscopic, right? And you can log on at any time and see it developing. It's amazing. And it develops over six days and over the six days,

things can go wrong sometimes they don't develop sometimes they develop too slowly but you need them to make it to the six-day mark when they get to the six-day mark if any get there you can do genetic testing if you choose to you don't have to I decided to do the genetic testing so that when the time comes I have the best chance of falling pregnant I know that there's nothing wrong that it might miscarry or whatever I just wanted to say I'll pay the extra just to check that I have the best possible chance. So I only got one that made it to the six days. Sorry I got two. One to make it to the six days and then one didn't survive properly the genetic testing. It was too unstable and they told me that. They were like it's not great because they can tell. They

grade them as well. They're like these are good ones, these are medium ones, these are bad ones. So I had one embryo and I felt really good about it. I was like you know Ben was like baby that's great we only need one which I know you don't because one embryo doesn't equate to one yeah live birth like a 45 chance of it taking but I didn't want to take that from him too I was like you're right like you know it's fine one's fine then they do the genetic testing and then it's like I think another eight days or something later you get the results but I thought what are the odds of something being wrong with that so I was telling everyone I thought we got an embryo it's amazing and then I remember getting I was over in Scotland and I remember getting the call

from the geneticist in my clinic and they said we're so sorry your embryo has a really really rare abnormality and I'm talking like I think there were like 12 live births recorded of of what this embryo had and essentially it's non-viable so even if it survived the pregnancy it wouldn't survive life it's not compatible with life it's not compatible with life so i didn't have to make a decision of what to do with that embryo because here in australia you're not allowed to go any further the clinic won't inject you with that embryo because they know it's not going to go anywhere yeah but that was devastating like you go through so much and i know there are so many women out there they're going to be listening to this you go through so much and you have all

of science and you've paid so much money and your hormones have gone through everything and and you have so much hope that you're going to get what you want and then you get nothing and I was like how did I just go through that how did I just go through all of that alone too and get nothing I was like yeah and then you just like you said before you feel so much shame I don't feel shame but I feel really guilty yeah because it's that cliche like you feel broken and Ben wants a child but he wants me more but you're like how what's wrong with my body like even with science why can't I it doesn't make sense anyway also there's another aspect if you like even just getting one and having something so rare I'm like what are the actual odds of that

like so I just took a breather for a little while and I decided to do it again because my fertility specialist was like look the odds of that happening she's like I will guarantee you basically that that will not happen again she's like we can go again it can't happen again because Ben and I as individuals were genetically tested and this is what's so fascinating individually you're genetically tested as the parents and we were fine so that's why they test the embryos again because it's something in the formation it's not coming from your DNA it's the development yeah like everything so many things have to go right for it to go right you know on a dna level but also just in terms of like how it progresses yeah so took a few months off

because i just needed to get myself ready emotionally again did it again and that was when you guys might have seen ben flew over just for that week we sort of had a joke about it but he flew in for like three or four days he literally flew in for my collection um and he did a live donations so last time we used frozen sperm but this time we were like okay let's try fresh so he flew in and he also just wanted to be there if I got none again he thought that I would be a mess and I would have been so he it was really beautiful so he flew in did his sperm donation we did the whole thing again and long story short we ended up with five which is great and then three good ones so three three that are viable so i yeah i now have very happy to report i have three

genetically tested embryos frozen which was like yeah which was really exciting and they're graded which is also interesting because they're like this is the best one then they're like this is also good and then they're like this is like we'll use that if the other ones don't work like they actually put them in a grade which is really cool but you know the big thing about this brit and like not that i want to link your personal story back to this but imagine if you were in a situation where that first round of embryo creation where an embryo was created that was completely non-viable with life but could not be destroyed and could not be implanted so you were also then left with the financial implications of keeping it on ice indefinitely because nobody knows what

to do with it for fear of criminal negligence or for fear of being punished for quote-unquote killing a child or unlawful harm to a child like it's it's unfathomable the pain that some of these families will go through and the lack of support that they have because of these changes in rulings well that's what made me so emotionally charged about this when i saw this come out last week i speaking to my sister Sherry about it and I was like you realize there's a high chance if I was in Alabama in that situation that I you know I could go to prison it could be wrongful death first of all be sued a lot of money or be sued first of all I would have embryos that I might not ever be able to use second of all I had one that had to be terminated because it was non-viable

but they would see it in Alabama as viable they would see that it is still it has still been made alive and they would have still said you need to give it the best chance of living even though science says it won't yeah i could not imagine what those women were going through but then there's a part of me that also relates to those three families that lost their embryo i understand in a way what they must be feeling because i know how unlikely it is that i'll probably get any more so imagine if someone had smashed someone after what i have just been through and people are going through it a lot more than me they're doing 10 15 20 like there are people doing multiple unsuccessful embryo collections and IVF rounds so I can't imagine

how much worse it is for them but if someone if I only had those three and some dickhead for whatever reason just knocked them off and they smashed and they and I cannot imagine how upset and angry and furious you would be that a chance to have a family that so many people think about their whole life and hold on to has literally just been snatched from their hands don't get me wrong I understand why these three families brought this as a civil suit and then fought it hard. I understand why they did it. But what I don't agree with is I don't agree with how the state has taken such an emotionally charged case that is such a unique case that has never happened before and use that as

the basis to change the legislation, which will affect everybody. And it affects people who now have embryos, who have gone through breakups, divorces, who can't use them who have gone through deaths who have gone through whatever the situation is imagine if you are married and your wife dies and you have embryos on ice what do you do with them now you've got the financial implications of having to manage the fact that you have your widowed but also manage the financial implications that you have embryos on ice that you can never use or you have to donate them to someone to use and then that's another conversation around whether you morally you know personally can do it i don't know i just think for someone who fucking loved

the handmaid's tale i see some of this stuff playing out in the states and i'm like that is exactly where this is headed and i know that this conversation will be very emotionally charged for a lot of people whether it's because you have been through the ivf journey yourself or maybe it is because you are somebody who is deeply religious and you hold these views and i understand that you feel the way that you feel and I know that we will receive messages from people who may be angry that we don't agree with it but ultimately this affects so many more people beyond your personal beliefs and I guess one of the reasons why I get so angry about this and I think we all should be angry about this is that when you really boil it down the whole purpose

behind this is to try and preserve and protect children ultimately that's what they're trying to say but I just think that that is so dressed up like it's such a farce when the biggest killer of children in the United States is gun violence and nobody is doing anything. Well, I mean in terms of when it comes to the political powers at be, nobody is doing anything because it's a constitutional right to bear arms. And so ultimately if you care so much about kids, do something about gun law.

100%. And the last thing I want to say is to be clear, I don't agree that this should be a cause for wrongful death. I don't agree that this legislation should be in place. but what I do say I understand is the feeling that those families must have. The feeling that maybe their one chance of a family has been taken away from them. But this is very evidently something that needs to be, I mean, it's such a peculiar particular case that we haven't seen before. It is a situation that will have to be taken day by day, case by case.

Not as the benchmark. Not as a benchmark. And what I mean by that is we don't know the exact surroundings of what this patient did when they came in and these embryos were destroyed if this patient planned and maliciously broke in to open the freezer with the sole intention of destroying these embryos then 100 that person should be held accountable but if there has been some sort of a mistake or somebody has decided they no longer want to use their embryo how are those two things related how are those two things connected but now they are exactly this is why it should be a case-by-case situation well it's time for accidentally unfiltered your most embarrassing story our

favorite segment i have one today that relates very much to you laura perfect has it got something to with feet i actually think you wrote it in it sounds like you wrote it i feel like i'm gonna be offended now now that you've said that i will be offended i recently had some delightful hemorrhoids mom life and when getting ready for work offended scene when getting ready for work one day i took a close-up photo of my anus so i could look at them properly i then went about my day and was at a lovely work lunch catching up with an old colleague who asked to see a photo of my daughter because it had been a while happily i opened my camera roll when she sat next to me staring at my screen right in all its glory and a close-up photo of my hemorrhoids on my asshole

i quickly quickly scroll past it i know she saw my asshole she didn't say anything but you know that moment where you're like we all no you all know that we just saw what's on the screen but you know how you're like let's just pretend that didn't happen no i think in that moment you would you admit it well sorry is that is that a hemorrhoid no what are we gonna say no you don't i mean the person who sees it doesn't the person that goes oh my god i'm so sorry i'm just taking photos of my hemorrhoids scroll on scroll on no no you don't need to sit in that that was my donut sorry about that you don't need to sit in that's just oh i don't know what you say but i don't think you do an explanation of

of the artwork that you just showed her do you know why because i feel like now that i've unleashed my my labia yeah now that i've unleashed the conversation about my labia i feel like these the types of Axioline filters we're going to get. Okay, all right, I have one more. Today was my birthday, so while I was at the local shopping centre having a coffee with my sister, I decided to treat myself to a cheeky little massage. Unfortunately for me and my masseuse, this was a spur-of-the-moment decision

and that morning I had put on my oldest, rattiest G-string with very minimal support, if you know what I mean. I'm wearing one right now, I know. As we are about halfway through the massage, the masseuse moves down and massages my legs and as she goes to pop my knee out to the side well something else popped out too it was my right labia the next 20 minutes were the most awkward of my entire life as i'm sure that she saw more than she bargained for okay i have a question it's fine no but this is my question and i really mean it why do all our boundaries and sensibilities go out the window

when you're getting a massage and what I mean by that is and you shouldn't do it on purpose no but what I mean by that is if you went to the beach no listen because I do it I do this when you go to the beach or something if you are whatever if you crossed your legs and your labia came out you're going to put it back in when you get a massage there's this feeling that happens where you feel like you can't like correct yourself so like you know when you're getting a massage and I'm going to stop you if my labia is laying out on the table I'm going to pop it back in no listen you know when you get a massage I'm laying on my back now for those that can't see you know how then they'll put your leg into like a frog position and sometimes like they'll do your

thigh if your flap pops out for some reason like you know it's a little bit there right like you know it's a little bit you don't want to draw attention but you don't you're just like well nothing i can do no there is but you choose not to you choose just to let it why do we do that instead of just being like oh sorry i'll just put that back in like why do we just sit there and feel like we can't because but you don't want to draw attention to it it's there the flaps out like the attention's drawn to it but it's the same thing as like you just showed a photo of your hemorrhoids to a person and you didn't want to draw attention to it so you scrolled on past and pretended like nothing it's the pretending like nothing happened yeah anyway let's talk

about suck and sweet before we get asses out of here my suck for this week is that matt this morning hasn't happened yet well it i mean it kind of has happened but the effects of it hasn't happened yet matt has gone to vegas oh really must be nice he's gone to vegas for 10 days he's working with ko which is a sporting channel and he's over there for the footy so must be real nice how do you guys do this division and you know what i found out i found this out on sunday just by accident he mentioned it in front of me so he's been employed to go over there as part of two doting dads right so the podcast two doting dads two dads who are doting on their children you know that's the whole premise of it right so ko said come to vegas you can bring your kids

and he said, nah, they don't want to come to Vegas. Yes, they do, Matt. They want to go to Vegas. Have you seen Marley on a blackjack table? That girl knows what's up. Make me some money, Marley. The kids want to go to Vegas. Mama wants the kids to go to Vegas.

Anyway, no, I actually don't want them to go to Vegas. Yes, you do. It was an option. Vegas is where dreams are made. The kids could have gone to Vegas. Mommy could have been on her own for 10 days. Oh, he conveniently left that little piece of information out. Yeah, but he is, so he comes back.

He goes to Vegas for ten days, comes back for five and then he is taking the kids around holidays. He's taking them away on a P&O cruise with his mum. And you don't get that either. I don't get to go on that one. I was like, I've got to work. You draw the short straw. Big time.

That's my suck. And my sweet for the week is that the weekend once again, it was fucking great. Taylor Swift on Friday night was a real high. Leaning into the cringe, embracing all the things that are dorky and lame and normally people would laugh at you because you're like, oh i'm gonna put my red lipstick on my cowboy boots and glitter in my hair and i'm a 37 year old mom and i don't care it was so dorky and fantastic that i loved every second of it my suck

is so i stayed at a hotel over the weekend as i mentioned with my friend shannon but i get my hallow fresh delivered on a sunday that's when it comes and that's my food for the entire week and i had just bought all of delilah's food like she has really fresh meats and stuff like that salmon yeah producer keisha had delilah because i was at the hotel so i went back to my house to get the hello fresh from the hotel and put it in my fridge because i was like i can't leave hello fresh on the street for two days a it'll be gone or it'll be off if someone doesn't take it so i i went home from the hotel got the hello fresh put in the fridge and then went back to the hotel and then keisha dropped delilah home this morning and she's actually it was the funniest

message hey brit did you mean to leave your fridge open and off no keisha i did not mean to leave my fridge door open and the power off as a full fridge and i'm like no keisha i didn't mean that why she's just checking she goes oh well it's open and off and anyway my entire fridge and freezer is off and i'm talking i've never had a fridge so full of food how full is it produce keisha it's so full everything everything is off that's really sad it's the biggest suck and my sweet Taylor Swift. You really need to wash the glitter off your face. Oh, I think that's highlighter.

I might have gone too heavy. Anyway, guys, that is it from us. We hope you loved the episode. If you did, you can always jump on and follow us wherever you listen to your podcast because it means that every episode will fall into your feed. And you can follow us on Instagram, Life Uncut Podcast, or on TikTok, and then we also have the discussion group

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