I was only 17 when I ejaculated into the cup that my future children would be frozen in. I was about to become a mother, whether I wanted to or not.

I could do nothing but quell the trembling in my fingers as I unbuttoned my pants and placed the cup on the tilted counter. Squatting on scratchy white paper laid out over my makeshift bed, I stretched into a flimsy medical gown that offered little comfort or privacy. The longer I stared at the room's gray walls, the more I realized even the shade itself couldn't commit to a tone. Taupe? Burgundy? As my eyes grew sore, I realized perhaps it was even baby pink, though that might have been too on the nose for a sperm bank.

The room smelled musky. Weeks-old semen was stuck to the walls and stained on the bed like a Jackson Pollock painting. Even the supposedly newly washed blanket, which who-knows-how-many men had wiped their youngsters off with, had little specks of white embedded in its cloth. 

Sitting on the white tarp, I looked up at the nurse, wide-eyed. I wondered if he did this every day—mechanically explaining how much semen was necessary to provide a sample that could produce children in 10, 20, 30 years. The kind that’ll last you a lifetime. I gave him a little nod, almost like a salute, the same type you’d give to an acquaintance you pass on the Main Green. Hi there. I acknowledge you. Good day!

After the nurse finished his spiel, he smirked, saluted back to me, and tiptoed out the door, but not without remembering to leave me magazines. Certainly, the nurse wasn’t so kind as to give me the latest copy of The New Yorker (or post- magazine), but Juggs. I laughed, flipped through the pages, and got grossed out. On the seventh page, a woman rode a horse in a way that was supposed to be erotic, but instead it reminded me of the carriages at merry-go-rounds that I used to ride as a child. I began to cry.

Even when I was small enough to comfortably fit in those carriages, I knew that I would never have children. But years later, the state of Texas informed me that I could not undergo feminizing hormone replacement therapy without freezing my sperm.

I had come out as a trans woman to my family in the months prior, and I chose to be called “Ivy” because that’s what my mother would have named me if I was cis. Popular narratives of the transfeminine experience speak toward issues of passing, name changes, pronouns, and coming out, but few talk about what hormones actually do to your body.

Yes, you grow breasts, and no, your voice doesn’t become more high-pitched. Sometimes you shrink a bit, and your hips will get wider. Your hair will become thinner, less visible, but it takes time, more than you’d like. You’ll get sad, then happy again. Your mood swings will become more common and you’ll notice crying isn’t just for graduations, funerals, or convocations, but moments like when the waitress reads your credit card and says “You don’t look like a boy named Nathaniel.” Your appetite will increase, and you’ll gain some weight. But most significantly, within six months, you’ll be sterile. Unable to produce. Done and gone.

All of these effects (except for breast growth, with the possibility of a mastectomy) are reversible, and you can go off hormones at any time. Within a few months, you can be a man again if you really wanted to. But sterility is the one thing medical providers haven’t figured out how to bypass yet. 

Our culture posits that children are a life-or-death decision. Or perhaps a life-making decision. But for me, it was more than that. 

“Are you interested in being not just a woman, but a mother?”

The answer was already decided.

***

I begged and pleaded with my doctor.

“But I don't want a kid! Why can't I just adopt if, I guess, I eventually want one? I know I don't, but please, just—"

“Ivy, it's the law,” my doctor replied, his jaw set like stone, lips trembling. “If you want to go through with this, this is just another hurdle you'll have to face.” He assured me I wouldn't have to use the frozen sperm sample. That I just needed to have the option if I ever changed my mind.

My pediatric endocrinologist—who worked with me for over two years—was lovely, sweet, and caring. He saw me change and grow and smile more—brought the light back to my cheeks. But he still couldn’t get me out of this situation. I thought my mom would step in. I looked at her like a puppy, chin tilted upward, eyes glistening with hope. Please? Mom, won’t you save me? But to my dismay, albeit with my understanding, she agreed with my doctor. 

I’ve always had a close relationship with my mother growing up and she remains my closest confidante. Yet motherhood was something I always feared. For one, because of the sheer responsibility parenthood entails—but beyond that, I feared the gender dynamics of being a trans mother and the ostracization of trans families in a world that is often violent to them. And what about my potential future child? Even if I get over the barriers of being a parent, how might my identity affect the way they’re treated?

My mother repeated this same sentiment over and over when I began transitioning. She deeply feared the potential harms it would cause—to employment, schooling, romance, and my overall happiness. But she encouraged me to follow my heart.

The spirit of transitioning is simply to pursue happiness. That’s all it really is about. Whether or not I’ll ever “truly” achieve it remains uncertain, but the essence lies in the effort. And in order to do so, I found myself having to forfeit my autonomy. My mother couldn’t save me from this lack of choice, even as my biggest advocate. And so I grunted, dragged my feet to the front desk, and booked the appointment—signing away a piece of myself in the process. 

Here I was, a teenager barely on the cusp of adulthood, forced to carry out a task that could result in a new human life—or multiple lives. These lives would be suspended in an artificial frozen state, waiting for an unknowable future that would never come. (I told myself on repeat: I’d never let it.)

To become a woman, evidently, one must stroke. And so I did. I looked toward the clock: It was 3 p.m. on a Wednesday. My fingers seemed to take on a life of their own, moving with a newfound sensitivity. They grew tails. I closed my eyes and begged my brain to conjure up an image of somewhere else entirely, somewhere far away from this sterile room. I kept my eyes shut, putting all my energy toward ejaculation. The poet Ocean Vuong describes penile ejaculation as if one is expecting blood to rush out of the phallus rather than semen. In this eerie room, my semen appeared to be blood, as if my body was playing some satanic twist on water into wine. Pints and pints of crimson poured forth with the unstoppable force of a ruptured dam.

TOO FAST, I thought—my hand shaking as I grabbed for the plastic cup, trying to catch at least some of the flood before it was too late. The room seemed to pulse with the weight of something huge and terrifying happening inside me. As I released, my whole body shook like it was coming apart at the seams. It was like I was emptying out not just my semen but my entire being, spilling my guts into this tiny cup in the middle of nowhere. 

I was a mother.

Trans motherhood was something I feared, but regardless, I took the first step because I had to. What does that mean? That I really did it and created this potential future child? That I somewhat willingly participated in this strange, clinical ritual? I'm never going to be able to give birth in the typical way, so perhaps this was my parturition. Somewhere out there, a piece of me is frozen in time, suspended in a state of eternal possibility. What do I do with that? It's a thought that fills me with awe and dread, with wonder and disgust.

***

Two years later, the assault on reproductive rights—not only in The South, but America writ large—has never been more dangerous. Far-right lawmakers are not only attacking abortion after the fall of Roe v. Wade but even attacking procedures like IVF (in vitro fertilization), emphasizing a “pro-natalist” approach to population growth that incurs the so-called natural ways of child making. Their strategy is in opposition to what scares them: the foreign, the abject, and even the trans woman. Certainly, over time, this strategy will lead to greater instability and difficulties for queer and trans people to have children in a system that is already unreliable. 

Further, I’ve since had to end care with my doctor. I can only speak with him in passing emails and life updates because the government of Texas argued the clinicians were “child abusers” and thus sued to close the entire pediatric clinic down. My clinic no longer exists— wiped from the Internet, the state, and what I know as my home. Even though my doctor enforced this policy, I was still denied access to his care when I needed it in the years after.

This twisted turn leaves me puzzled. The state made me preserve my sperm before it allowed me to be trans. I was coerced into this act. And now, I might not even be able to use the frozen children they forced me to churn out—urged to put out genetic material but unable to access the very sperm I created.

The law told me loud and clear: I can't be trusted to make a decision of that grandeur. Its tone channeled the same paternalistic attitudes that question trans people's reproductive autonomy. That I can’t be trusted. That I don’t know what I want. Now every day is especially fraught with this question because it feels like I am bound to something. Someone made me commit to frozen children. And now, I'm left wondering what that commitment means in a world where reproductive rights are under constant threat.

Our medical and legal systems are paternalistic—pretending to know us better than we know ourselves, while rejecting us at every turn. We check boxes and do things because we're told we're wrong about ourselves. 

But the truth is, we never are.