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by Stephanie Reents


Last Will and Testament: My Frozen Eggs


In the unfortunate event that I, Lucy McDowell, perish before using my seventeen unfertilized eggs to put a bun in the oven, I hereby declare that my girlfriends, such as they are, have, in the order specified hereinafter, the following rights to them:[1]

1. Miriam Goldstein shall have primary right to the custody of my eggs. Since she cannot bear children, I would like to do my best to make her dream become reality. In turn, she could help me realize one of my dreams by agreeing to have Her/My child raised in an appropriately conservative Episcopal church.

2. Mimi Thompson shall be of second priority since I am confident she will offer Her/My child a wholesome upbringing. Naturally, she will avoid disclosure to Her/My progeny the incidents on or about May 21, 2000 at Club Med – Bahamas, with special limitation on the disclosure of the singular incident involving the tennis pros, Lucia, and/or the swim instructor, Phillipe, regardless of the venue of alleged incidents, be it the tennis court, the hot tub, or both. (I know you’d want to give your baby a good impression of Auntie Lucy!)

3. Debbie Williams shall be of third priority, provided that she will first terminate her relationship with her boyfriend, Lyle, and get serious with someone who is her intellectual match. (You know you’re too good for him, sweetheart – never mind his big schlong!) As further condition, I beg Debbie to undertake driving lessons so that she does not endanger her life or the life of Her/My unborn child.[2]

4. Tina Bullman shall be next of right, if she is willing to be bound by the following explicit and non-negotiable stipulation when selecting a sperm donor: said donor must be very and undeniably heterosexual (i.e., all man). Tina knows what her issues are in this regard.

5. Zoe Bliss Lavender shall follow in priority, provided that she call My/Her boy “Luke” or My/Her girl “Lucy,” as the case may be, in honor of me and to put an end to the nonsensical practice of names expressing one’s “inner spiritual essence.”

6. Nova Fluck shall come next, on the condition that after the successful delivery of My/Her first child, no subsequent attempts be made to bear children, either with my eggs, her eggs, or other donor eggs. One child is all you can handle, babe!

7. Jennifer Anniston shall have penultimate rights to my frozen eggs. Although Jen and I have never been introduced, many people have commented on our uncanny resemblance. If Jen, like so many women, postpones motherhood too long and learns that there is an inverse correlation between the bounty of her ovaries and her preternatural youthfulness, that her fertility has been compromised by the cigarettes that she is rumored to smoke and her eggs are like “weekend fruit,”[3] I would be honored if she would accept this gift of life.

8. Nan McDowell comes last and with the explicit provision that she may not pretend to my genetic offspring that she is me, even though as my younger sister she has spent her whole life chafing at the fact that she was not me. Moreover, custodianship is further conditioned on Nan’s taking a two-year leave of absence from her job as a management consultant, which really isn’t as high-powered as she thinks it is. At the very least, Nan must step off the fast track, such as it is in her case. (Though this is a choice I would have never made, given that I was on the fast track, which, along with the fact that you stole my boyfriend, Henry Funsten, may have some bearing on how I’ve found myself in this desperate situation, sis!)

If, under implausible and rare circumstances, none of my benefactors are equipped to accept my impossibly generous gift, my frozen eggs should be auctioned on E-Bay to the highest bidder.

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[1] The aforementioned eggs can be found in deep freeze storage at Alpha Genes Fertility Center.

[2] Come to think of it, though, if I die because Debbie got me killed in a car accident, she forfeits rights to my eggs.

[3] See “Forever Fertile” by Diana Kapp in San Francisco (October 2003). According to Barry Behr, an embryologist at Stanford’s In Vitro and Reproductive Technologies Lab, eggs don’t age so well: “The analogy I use is fruit at the supermarket. The delivery (of fruit) is made on Monday. By Sunday, it’s all rotten bananas and bruised plums. Eggs after 40 are like weekend fruit.”