It’s been just a few weeks since Keshia Knight Pulliam shared in a promo clip from OWN’s “Eggs Over Easy: Black Women & Fertility” documentary that she was freezing her eggs. Now that the documentary has premiered on Tuesday, Jan. 4, the actress surprised viewers and fans with another shocker about her in vitro fertilization journey.
The “House of Payne” actress told People magazine on Jan. 6, “I began the process of freezing my eggs and then literally the day that I was supposed to start my meds is when, as a result of the pandemic, they shut down all elective medical procedures. So, I was unable to continue.”
According to Medicinenet.com, “elective” in medicine is a procedure “that is chosen (elected) by the patient or physician that is advantageous to the patient but is not urgent.” Scheduling an elective surgery, for instance, means that the surgery can be scheduled in advance and that it is not an immediate procedure.
As for the in vitro process being considered elective, Pulliam does not agree. The mother of one said, “It’s crazy that preserving your right and your ability to have a baby is considered elective. It shouldn’t. It should be an option that’s given to all women.”
To enlighten people on how much the pandemic affected the medical world beyond the ones being treated for coronavirus she said, “I think a lot of people didn’t realize that, with the world shutting down in the pandemic, it didn’t just affect your ability to go to the mall, or to do sporting events the way you want to, but it definitely affected a lot of people from a medical standpoint. People were unable to get mammograms and cancer surgery [which] were very much needed.”
While the 42-year-old was upset by her in vitro plans being put on hold, she said she and her new husband Brad James are currently trying to increase their family from three members to four by natural conception or the “old-fashioned way,” as she called it.
She said, “A couple of years ago, it was ‘OK, we want a baby.’ But not now, now we’re open to getting pregnant. So, you know, we’ll see what happens.”
Pulliam currently has a 4-year-old daughter named Ella Grace Hartwell by her ex-husband Edgerton Hartwell.
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