The afternoon started as usual for me; finish classes, wrangle up the boys, grab a six pack and see what the night holds.

That night there would be a frat party to attend. While I never had an interest in joining the brotherhood, I did see the allure of their parties. So, when Aaron extended an invitation, I said yes.

The frat house smelled of cheap beer and urine and yet there were women inside, attractive women.

“Check out the one in the red,” I said to Aaron, “do you know her?”

“No, but I do know her friend. Let’s go.

Like any good wingman, he introduced us and I started chatting up the lady in red.

We talked for hours as I fumbled my way through the night. We said our goodbyes and then she and her friend went home.

It took me four weeks to build up the courage to ask, but I got her number.

On our first date we had Cajun. She was an only child from a small family, and I was the youngest of four. She knew exactly what she wanted in life – a successful career and a big family. Five years later, we tied the knot.

As newlyweds, we had our battles. Living in Phoenix as a pale-skinned ginger wasn’t working for me. She let me win that battle — we moved north.

We agreed that we wanted kids, but not before 28. Soon enough, 28 came and went. Parenting would have to wait. She pursued her master’s degree; I bought a business.

Her mother called her a fertile turtle, so we assumed that when the time came, it would be a cakewalk.

At age 34, after two years of not winning a cake, we decided medical intervention, IVF (In vitro fertilization) would be our route to parenthood.

Lucky for us, we had just sold our home in Olympia so we had the funds to cover it.

After months of needles to her stomach and a literal scraping of her uterus she, our highly-paid-private medical team, and I had created a batch of healthy embryos.

The process went like this: slowly bring an embryo from cryo freeze to room temperature, inject said embryo into uterus, confirm embryo is out of the catheter, then wait nine days to see if the embryo would be viable.

The days were long and stressful so by the time we were readying for our third attempt, we decided to take a break if this one didn’t catch.

The doctors didn’t know why the first two didn’t take. We were just the unlucky few, they said, a statistical anomaly.

“Everything is right on our end,” they said.

Another nine days passed and we drove from our little home in Port Townsend across the Tacoma Narrows bridge for a blood test to find out whether or not we’d be parents.

She was pregnant. After nearly three years of trying, we got our lucky break.

The truth be told, I didn’t truly know I wanted to be a parent until that possibility was taken away from me.

It wasn’t until 1978 that the first successful IVF pregnancy and live birth occurred. Now, nearly 20 states have announced that fetuses at some stage of pregnancy are people.

After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the Alabama Supreme Court decided that discarded embryos from fertility treatments were considered children, halting IVF procedures there.

One of the candidates for president argues that abortion rights should be settled state by state. That gave cover to Senate Republicans shooting down federal protections for IVF — they recently blocked a bill that would guarantee access to IVF nationwide.

The rights of women to choose when, how, and most importantly for us, if they choose to raise a family has never been so at risk in my lifetime.

As I write this now, my baby boy is asleep beside me.  I’m thankful I live in a time and in a state where IVF is an option.

That’s a fact I will remember while filling out my ballot.

Lloyd Mullen is the publisher of the Port Townsend & Jefferson County Leader.