The Daily - A Couple Breaks Up. Who Gets Custody of Their Embryos?

0:01From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily. In recent years, more and more Americans have been turning to IVF to have children, which means more and more embryos are being stored in fertility clinics all over the country. And that has made one question increasingly urgent. What should happen to those embryos if a couple breaks up? In much of the country, the legal system has no clear answer to that question.

0:36Nor does it have clear rules for weighing one person's desire to become a parent against another person's desire not to. Today, my colleague Caroline Kitchener tells us the story of one couple that found themselves caught in this exact limbo. It's Thursday, September 10th. Caroline, you recently chronicled this really heart-wrenching fight over embryos that this one couple had made when they were still together. And the fight and how it unfolded touched on all kinds of issues that really felt very much of our time, like modern fertility treatments, the question of when life begins, the shape of what a family looks like in our day and age. So tell us how all of that fits into what you cover and how you came to this story. So I cover a really broad range of issues related to women and families, but I've been paying particular attention over the last year or so to IVF because we've been hearing about that more and more.

1:47from our politicians especially. I mean, the Trump administration has talked about IVF more than any other president ever, starting with his campaign promise to make IVF free and widely accessible for all. And as we're hearing more about IVF, as more and more families are turning to IVF to have children, I think that there are a lot of really new, complicated, and totally fascinating questions.

2:16around life when you engineer it in a lab. I think most of us are familiar with the broad outlines of IVF. Like IVF is a process that helps people have children, right? But when you talk about these questions that it raises as more and more people are doing it, what specifically about IVF is at issue here? So IVF or in vitro fertilization is a process by which Agansperm are combined together to create an embryo in a lab outside of the uterus. And often embryos are frozen and stored for future use. And there are a lot of murky gray areas that people are just starting to explore and think about differently. One of which is the question of

3:09what happens to those embryos if a couple breaks up? Who has custody of the potential for life? And I recently came across a case out of New York that I think really captured a lot of these dilemmas. And tell us about the couple at the center of that case. So the woman is Erin Millender, and the man is Adam Rubin.

3:33Adam declined an interview with me, but he did provide answers to a detailed list of questions that I sent him. And he also outlined his point of view in extensive affidavits that he filed for the case. I did, however, spend a lot of time with Erin and talked to her for many hours about her story. My name is Erin Alice Millender. Erin is a lawyer.

4:00She is 47 years old. This would be a very different discussion if I was 27 and not 47. But he met me at almost 40. He knew what the stakes were. We both did. And I think that has to be considered. And I think Erin is really still running back over in her mind to the conversations they had, the heartbreak that they experienced together.

4:27remembering especially, I think, the commitment she said they made about the family that they wanted to build. Erin, I want to start by getting us to travel back in time a little bit. Take me back to the first moment you remember wanting to be a mom. I don't know if it was ever as personal or specific as wanting to be a mom. I think I knew from a very early age, I wanted a family. So Erin, she told me her desire to have children and a family really came from her own childhood. My parents had gotten divorced when I was two, and I grew up with my dad. From age two to twelve, it was just me and my dad against the world. You know, her parents got divorced pretty early in her life. She

5:27lived with her dad for a long time, had a very close relationship with him. But I missed my mom. You know, I saw other friends and relatives who had what you see as a traditional family, and I wanted that. So...

5:44The goal was always to recreate that whole family that I didn't have as a young child. And I think I actually had a really good idea of how I wanted that to look. I knew I wanted to find... But one thing that Erin remembers her mom saying to her was, don't get married too young.

6:01You have plenty of time. My mom had gotten married young around 20. I know there were some things she felt like she missed out on that she regretted and she urged me not to rush into it. And so Erin really took that to heart. She got out of law school.

6:16became a lawyer. I did want to make sure that I was financially stable before I had kids. She's very focused on her career. And I kind of told myself at 26 that I'd give it a good 10 years before I started to like worry. She figures like, I've got almost 10 years before I need to start like fretting about this, right? Sure. The medical guidance at the time, you know, 35 is when they start calling you a geriatric pregnancy, which is I think a little bit of a cruel term.

6:44But my understanding was that's when medically there become concerns about fertility. And I figured, well, until then, I'll just let life play out and see how it goes. That's not to say that she doesn't date. She does. And she dates very intentionally. You know, the early aughts was the rise of dating apps. OK, Cupid and eHarmony. And I was on them. I tried them. But.

7:12I always wondered why they don't just have singles night at the laundromat like at places you need to be anyway like can you just put all of the single people together and so I decided I would try to engineer that myself. Erin told me this story that I really think.

7:29gives you a very good sense of who she is. Tell us. She wrote an ad for herself that she put on Craigslist. There was a container store near my office. I was, you know, in the early days of building my first apartment in New York. So there was always some sort of hangar organizer that I needed. And I was like, you know, two birds, one stone, I can go get some errands done. Maybe I meet a cute guy. She said, I'm going to be at the container store.

7:57from, say, 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. on a Tuesday night, go to the container store and walk up to the prettiest girl you see, and I can't wait to meet you. Wow. Not that I, by a mile, think that I am the prettiest girl in New York City.

8:12But I figured that was a good way to control for, well, okay, this is the person who will find me attractive. She told me she wanted to meet someone organically doing the tasks that she normally does walking around a store. Like the container store is fine. Let's see what your philosophy of organization is. And if we could build a compatible home together, do we agree on the way the toilet paper should go on the roll?

8:35That's make or break. I mean, to be honest, it does not sound too far removed from all these creative ways that single people are trying to meet people these days, who are desperate to get off the apps, for instance. Like, anybody who's ever joined a run club knows this. 100%.

8:52So, did this work, Erin? Did you find a guy that you were looking for at the computer store? No, I did not. I mean, I kept myself entertained and I was like, you know, my time will come. But Erin gets to her mid-30s and the guy has not appeared yet. And she starts to look around at her friends and the people in her circle. As time marches on, when I started to get to be about 37, 38, then you really start doing the math.

9:21And it's kind of like, okay, when? She realizes she stopped going to weddings and started going to like toddler's birthday parties. And... It starts to get discouraging. She said it started to feel like a game of musical chairs. Yeah. Everybody had their chair and there's nowhere for her to sit. Well, how does she eventually meet Adam?

9:43So they meet in 2018 through a mutual friend from a book club. I met him the old-fashioned way, which I loved. He works at an HVAC company. He helps run the HVAC company. He's about to turn 37 when they meet. She's about to turn 39. We had a really good conversation. I think we talked and watched basketball for probably five hours before. We were like, oh yeah, we meant to get dinner. And I think right away it's really easy.

10:14We were just hysterically laughing like the kind of inappropriate laughter that you usually don't want to do in a nice restaurant. First of all, I couldn't remember the last time I got seven hours into a date and was still enjoying myself. I remember thinking at that moment like, wow, this is, this is an amazing sign. Like this is the kind of laughter you share with a best friend. And then a couple months in, they're gonna have sex for the first time.

10:42A girl's got to eat. I was not entirely celibate in my 30s, but I'd been very careful in my younger days about not accidentally getting pregnant and right as they are in the heat of the moment. The first time we were intimate, I was very clear about the fact that I was 39. I did eventually want children. Erin offers the fact that She is not on birth control and she says you should know that if we got pregnant I would want to keep it. So by that time I was starting to have a solid feeling about his character and our compatibility and I don't know as I got older the downsides of getting pregnant by accident Started to be outweighed by the fear of not ever getting pregnant. I think is what it was She's very up front with him and she says

11:41At this point in my life, I really want to have a kid. I still didn't want to get pregnant by accident. I wanted to be intentional about it. But I just wanted to be clear with him that if something happened, I was at the point where I would want to keep a child regardless. And I disclosed that before we were intimate because I wanted to make sure that he felt the same way. And I felt like if he didn't, then that would be very...

12:08telling of where he stood on having children. And just to be clear, she barely knows him at this point, right? So this really underscores how much she wants a child that she's basically willing to have them with a stranger. I wouldn't say he's a stranger at this point. I think they're about two months into their relationship. Okay, you and I can agree to disagree about whether that could qualify as a stranger vis-a-vis whether a person is going to be the parent of your child, but continue. Fair enough. Well, Erin, you know...

12:34She has thought through the fact that even if they weren't going to have this lifelong romance, she could see having a child that they co-parent together. And ultimately, you know, as they spend more time together, it does become clear that they both want to partner in kids. And if there was a moment where I was really started to feel sure that this was somebody I wanted to build a life with, I think it was that first fall, about six, seven months in, my father had gotten ill and I moved him to New York. And the way he took care of my dad really told me a lot about how he felt about family. And as time goes on, Erin sees Adam really showing up for her in his beautiful ways that she loves, particularly around her dad.

13:30He helped me load up a U-Haul with furniture to get my dad settled in a comfortable home. And I have a picture of Adam's legs sticking out from under a couch. It's just his lower half with him putting together this couch for my dad. And I remember looking down and just thinking, that's a real man. Like, that's the kind of guy you marry. And Aaron just thinks to herself.

13:58Yeah, he is loving me in the way that I really want to be loved. I left out the part about the happy trail. There's also like a happy trail in that picture and it was just, it was hot, honestly. I'm like, here he is doing man things with his tools, putting together a sofa for my dad. Like, I think that's my guy. But I think the timelines are a little off. I told him, I was like, hey, you know.

14:28But I'm ready for this next step because I'm 40 and I would like to have children and I would like to have them with you. And I think this could be great. But if that's not where you're at, I really need to know. And at a certain point, she says to him, look, I can't waste one more day if I want to have children. And if he's not on board with that, she was out. You know, I want time for a relationship to be established and to develop and mature. But.

14:55That butts up against some biological realities of how much time you really have to not only feasibly have a child and carry a pregnancy, but to do it safely. And he's not ready. And they actually break up. And then about five or six months later, he came back and changed his mind, said he really wanted to have a future with me.

15:19But ultimately, it worked out. He proposed in September of 2020. And in September of 2021, they get married. You know, we had both waited so long to find our person. And we were like, we did it. So, OK, Caroline, at this point in the story, things seem to be going pretty well for Aaron and Adam. Where are they in terms of their plans to have children? Well, We always knew that we were going to start as soon as we could after we got married because at that point I was 42. When Erin goes to the doctor to get checked out. The panic had kind of officially set in, especially since I had received an infertility diagnosis. They actually tell her that she has some issues with infertility. And I was feeling

16:08That changes myself and my own body. What I later learned were symptoms of perimenopause, but at the time was just a vague sense of my cycle is different. My body feels different. Something is changing. And they start IDF. Adam is very supportive. He was very involved in the doctor's appointments and the shots. And he's helping her with everything she needs. I mean, he more than showed up. But pretty quickly, things start to get more complicated. They find out that from the IVF process, they only have three embryos they can use, and one of them has some abnormalities. I mean, the anxiety had ratcheted up about five more notches. And in the same period, her dad, who she was just so close to, my dad had a severe stroke that left him in need of 24-hour care. His health is taking a turn for the worse.

17:06and it pushed our timeline back, just getting him somewhere where he was safe. And then, so by the time we transferred the first embryo, it was a full year after we had created it. They do their first embryo transfer to try to place the embryo inside of Aaron's uterus. You know, I was really doing my best. We were really hopeful. They do that with the strongest of all the embryos, and they find out that the transfer failed.

17:40It was incredibly heavy. It was exacerbated by the grief I was feeling over my dad. It was really hard to hold hope for new life while watching him decline so rapidly and knowing that his death was imminent. And, you know, at the same time facing the decline of my fertility, it was just, it was a whole lot of mortality.

18:08sort of staring me in the face all at once. It was terrifying, honestly. And my husband just kept looking at me, not saying a word. He was calm, which up until that point, I had really appreciated his ability to stay calm when I was otherwise overwhelmed. But in that particular moment, it felt like...

18:41Something's wrong. Like maybe I'm alone in this. I asked him what he was feeling and he said, I'm sad. And that was kind of it. And when they decide to do another round of IVF, they have another setback. That round yields no more viable embryos. So all they have are those two embryos left. This is where things start to get really hard because Aaron doesn't feel like he is...

19:17affected in the way that she is. And that starts to create this really difficult distance between them. We'll be right back. So Caroline, you had told us that all of these things that Aaron and Adam have gone through, the failed transfer, they're not having as many viable embryos as they'd hoped. Aaron's dad, of course, being sick, all of this leads to some tension between the two of them. So where do things go from here? So this is the point where the perspectives on what happened really diverge. There are two people in the relationship, and unsurprisingly, they remember the way in which the relationship broke down differently. Unfortunately, like I said, I didn't get to talk to Adam directly for this story. But from the email he sent me and from his court records, I had a pretty clear idea of what this period of time was like for him. And it seems very clear to me that

20:34This period of time was also very hard for him. The IVF process had been emotionally draining. He had really put so much of his energy into it along with Erin. And there was a point he said where he felt like she really stepped away from him. I tried my best to explain to him that I just, I was at a breaking point. I was like, I can't, I have to let a ball drop.

21:05It's too much. I am trying to bring a new life into the world. I am trying to keep my dad in this world. I am the primary breadwinner in our household. I am trying to maintain executive presence at work. Something's got to give. She moved into a different bedroom. I needed space. I needed a minute. She said she didn't want to do couples counseling anymore.

21:30couples counseling, we had been doing it for months. It didn't seem like it was working at the moment. It wasn't really fixing anything. And I said, you know, I just, I need to go to my corner and just decompress for a second. Not everything can be fixed together. And I thought that was okay. And then she told him that she didn't want him to come to any more of their IVF appointments. Emotionally, I needed support. I wasn't getting from him. But I talked to a lot of friends who had been through something similar with their partners who said that, you know, until there was an actual baby there, or at least a bump, that emotionally they maybe weren't as invested and that that was normal. And so I told myself, this is women's work. Let me gather my tribe of women and they will walk me through this because they've been through it. And I think that in particular, to be suddenly shut out of something that he had given so much emotional energy to,

22:29That was really, really difficult. And I thought I would just read a few of his words directly. Please. So Adam says, I was devastated by these decisions, particularly the exclusion from our joint efforts to build a family. He says, when I conveyed how painful it was to be excluded, she responded, you are not a priority. Adam says, I was shocked and hurt, especially given the intimate and collaborative nature of the journey we had undertaken until then. Her exclusion of me from the medical process was absolute. I was reduced from a co-participant to a bystander. You know, at some point, Erin remembers Adams saying something along the lines of, I would rather have a healthy marriage than a baby. To me, those things weren't

23:26In conflict, it wasn't that our marital communication wasn't a priority to me. It just wasn't subject to the same biological reality that my fertility was. She told me, she said to Adam, look, we have the rest of our lives to work on this marriage. But for a baby, we are in the 11th hour right now. And that's just not how Adam sees it at all. And by the end of June 2023, He brings up divorce for the first time the unraveling all happened so quickly from the time we did our last round of IVF, you know in which he was actively participating Encouraging me cheering for me putting posters up around the house about you can do it to the time he said he wanted a divorce and he was never looking back was not even two months and Erin is just totally shocked by that

24:27She says and then very quickly to her mind turns to these embryos that they've created together. And is there a question or what is she thinking about them? Well, Erin had been hoping to go into the clinic for an embryo transfer in a couple of weeks. And now she doesn't know what to do. So she calls the clinic to see what her options are. I think still at that point she's not giving up. She is still thinking that There is a way to repair this relationship. There is a way to convince him that we should move forward and we should have children. So I called the clinic and they told me, well, actually your husband called and withdrew his consent for there to be any more embryo transfers. And she finds out that Adam has actually revoked his consent to use the embryos. Oh, wow. And he had not given her any indication that he was going to do that. No.

25:23When the doctor told me he had revoked his consent it Not only was the fact itself devastating But the fact that I was finding out from the clinic that he had done it without telling me Felt like an incredible betrayal. I felt incredibly disrespected. I felt abandoned I felt like I didn't know my husband anymore. I didn't know who this person was Aaron is now thinking okay What options do I have left? And that's the point at which she decides to freeze her eggs. Her kind of tentative plan is that she could find an anonymous donor to create embryos with. But the doctor really drives home just how slim those chances are at this point for her. And so she knows those embryos that she created with Adam, those are her best chance at having a biological child. And so

26:33At that point, a New York divorce court becomes the forum for deciding this question of embryo custody and the fate of these two remaining embryos. Okay, but when a couple goes to an IVF clinic, I would have imagined that there would be contracts that you sign with the clinic and sign with each other or sign with somebody that address some of these questions such as What happens to the embryo if we break up or somebody dies or I don't know, like a million different hypothetical situations? There are contracts. Standard IVF agreements, they often give you three options for what happens in the case of splitting up. One option is the embryos are destroyed. The embryos are donated for research. And another is that the embryos are given to one party.

27:27Erin and Adam, they actually signed two different contracts at different times in their IVF process, determining what would happen in the case of them getting divorced. The first time right at the very beginning of when they started the IVF process, they agreed to donate any leftover embryos to research. But then months go by and there are only these two embryos left and they decide that in the case of a divorce, those embryos would go to one party or the other. But they never specified which party that would be. And so this really brings us to the heart of the court case and the question of who gets custody of the embryos. And they have oral arguments in a Brooklyn courthouse last September. So what is each person's argument before the court? So Aaron Seid is making the case that there was a deep

28:24promise that was made. And she really sacrificed the last years of her biological fertility because Adam said that they were going to have children together and that you really can't just take that away. On top of that, they say that Erin has always wanted to be a mother. And this is more than likely her last chance. So she should be given that chance now. That's their argument.

28:53And what about Adam's side? What does he say? Well, Adam is arguing that Aaron doesn't have an absolute right to biological parenthood and that by having their child without his involvement, he would essentially be reduced to an anonymous donor. You know, again, I think I want to read some of his arguments for why he feels that Aaron should not get the embryos without his consent.

29:19He says, reducing him to an anonymous donor in this way would violate his Jewish faith because he says that Judaism imparts on you that you must transfer the lessons of Judaism to your offspring. And he would not be able to do that if he was not part of his child's life. And during those oral arguments in September, Aaron gets a pretty good feel from the judge that The judge is really responding to the arguments that her side is making. And Erin knows that if the judge rules in her favor, she will have the opportunity to transfer an embryo. And pretty much right away, she starts making plans so that the minute that decision comes down, she can spring into action. The day we got the ruling from the lower court, I got the email that just said two words. We won. And in fact,

30:47the judge rules in her favor. Wow. But Aaron also knows Adam is probably going to appeal this decision, which means that I am probably going to have a very narrow window in which to get this embryo inside of my body. I didn't know if he was going to follow through with it, or when he was going to follow through with it, or if it would happen before I could get the transfer accomplished.

31:13Pretty much immediately she starts the IVF process. I was running back and forth between the clinic and the court trying to see if anything had been filed and just really praying that the universe was on my side. And just as she expects, Adam files an appeal and the appellate court actually does put a stay.

31:39basically temporarily blocks the lower court's ruling and says, okay, from this moment on, no party can do anything with these embryos. But at that point, it was too late. Not long before the stay was announced, Erin was able to get in at the IVF clinic for her embryo transfer. Two of my closest friends came with me on the day of the transfer.

32:11By that time, everybody at the clinic knew me. I had receptionists and nurses and doctors who had seen me through the years of this journey, just seen me breaking down in tears, sobbing in the clinic over and over again, wondering if this day was ever going to come. And I went back. They let my friends come with me. They both held my hands. They were both moms.

32:37The doctor came out with the embryo and this tiny catheter. It was a really dark room with the ultrasound on the wall. She describes the moment when she first sees that embryo on the ultrasound screen. And you can see them insert the catheter and there's this little bright light where the embryo is. And they release it. And we were all...

33:05Holding our breath it was you could hear a pin drop as they released the embryo and it just sat there on the screen just glowing and I just I was so overcome and finally I'm looking at the screen and there's my baby safely nestled inside my womb and I just felt like finally you're safe you're home She described it like her uterus was the night sky and it was this tiny little star and she just felt so relieved. And eventually she gets the call from the clinic telling her that she's pregnant. And how does Adam react to this news when he finds out? Well, he doesn't know for a while.

33:57he actually is told by Aaron's lawyer the night before they have a hearing in New York City. And so I'm actually there in the courthouse for the moment when they see each other for the first time, both knowing that Aaron is carrying their child. Adam is sitting all the way down the hallway and Aaron just kind of keeps stealing glances at him. And he's looking at her. And I couldn't read his emotions. I couldn't tell what his expression was or what his mood was. And she's just really wondering, what is he thinking? She says that for so long, she had imagined what she always thought would be this incredibly joyous moment of sharing the news of her pregnancy with her partner. You know, we struggled for so long. We went through such a hard, hard thing. And we finally got there. I finally got there.

34:56And I was really sad not to share that with him. But it wasn't that at all. Wow, so at this point, as I understand it, Aaron is pregnant. There's one remaining embryo left in the custody case. Where does the case stand today?

35:11So now the case actually is on appeal. So there is, you know, another higher court that is going to decide what should happen to the remaining embryo in the case. And I think importantly, appeals court is where precedent is set. So this is a case that will have bearing on other cases, depending on what that appeals court rules. Well, can you talk a little bit more about that? Like, what are the implications exactly beyond these two people? Well, this area of law is Kind of like the Wild West. I mean, two-thirds of states have no precedent on this issue of who would get the embryos in the case of a couple splitting up. That basically means that an appeals court has not considered it or has not ruled on it yet. And when you don't have precedent from a higher court, it gives more power to the individual judges at the lower court level.

36:07And so you get really different rulings on cases like this from judge to judge, from state to state. And we really see states figuring this out actively in real time. Arizona actually became the first state to have legislation on this issue back in 2018. Their law, which was passed by a pretty conservative legislature there in Arizona, said that the embryos should go to whichever party was more likely to have those embryos as children. Last year, a very similar case to Aaron and Adams went all the way up to the Michigan Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court ultimately said, you know what? We're not going to rule on this. This is a question for the legislature. So my big takeaway from doing the story and learning about the legal landscape is that

37:01it's still kind of wide open. And each case, if it reaches the appeals court level, has the potential to impact other similar cases. And that's certainly true of Erin and Adam's case too. What do you think Caroline that Erin would say to somebody who felt that it was unfair that her desire to have a child?

37:28trumped Adam's desire to not have a child or at least not have this child with this embryo. Well, I actually asked Aaron that question. Aaron, I think that some people might listen and think to themselves, you know, Adam did contribute 50% of his DNA to these embryos and what would you say to someone whose position is, is it unfair to use these embryos without his consent?

37:58You know, how do you weigh your desire to become a parent against his desire not to? I mean, I definitely did feel the weight of this decision. And I understand that reasonable people might not agree about what should happen here. It's hard is what it is. It's just really, really hard. And sometimes there are no good choices, you know.

38:35Go against my husband's wishes or never be a mother like that's what what kind of choice is that? It's an impossible choice So at this point Aaron is well on her way. She is due in October Wow, and I think now she's really still trying to figure out how she got here and how all this played out, you know in our conversation she started talking about how this would be different if you know they'd done it the old-fashioned way and had sex and Aaron had gotten pregnant and then three, four months into the pregnancy they decided to get it worse. Outside of IVF, if a man changes his mind five days after conception and wants to withdraw his DNA, there is no remedy for that.

39:33Nature doesn't offer a remedy for that. So it's a fair question to ask, should we create one where one doesn't otherwise exist in nature? Do you get a do-over? I don't know. For years, we had a shared goal of building a family together. So was one person allowed to deviate from the plan unilaterally and change the entire course of somebody else's future? That's how I view this. That's how I experience this. You know...

40:05When I started working on the story, I was thinking about a similar thing to Erin. I was thinking about how this all would have played out differently if the baby had been conceived naturally rather than through IVF. But that's not the situation we're in. They didn't get pregnant the old fashioned way. And man, that changes everything. And that is why This case is so interesting and I think so important because the reality is that there are so many more embryos that are out there. I mean, hundreds of thousands of embryos and we'll have to see what is the most fair way to think about this. What is the way forward in these really thorny, messy situations where

41:08life is created outside of the womb. I don't think we know yet. Caroline Kitchener, thanks so much. Thank you so much for having me. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. The bond market issued a swift rebuke to the Trump administration's latest attempt on Wednesday to lower borrowing costs as the 10-year Treasury yield rose to its highest level in roughly three years.

41:55The department said it would repurchase up to $6 billion of its own debt as it seeks to cool down borrowing costs that have drifted steadily higher in recent months. Treasury yields underpin borrowing costs for companies and consumers. So higher interest rates have increased the cost for everything from housing, cars, and other items that people buy on credit. And Iran has signaled that it is willing to escalate its fight with the United States.

42:22with senior leaders issuing increasingly sharp warnings in recent days after attacking American warships for the first time. The US military said Tuesday that it had destroyed five Iranian oil tankers in retaliation for attempted strikes on a US Navy warship, while Iran said that it launched strikes at a base used by American forces in Jordan in response. The attacks occurred three days after Iran made its first known attempt at striking an American military vessel. The recent clashes have reignited fears of an escalating regional war. Today's episode was produced by Stella Tan. It was edited by Lizzo Baylin with help from Lisa Chow and Ben Calhoun. It was fact-checked by Susan Lee and contains original music by Marian Lazano and Dan Powell. And additional music by Leah Shaw-Dameron and Pat McCusker. Our theme music is by Wonderly. This episode was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Special thanks to Peter Walston.

43:30For The Daily, I'm Rachel Abrams. See you tomorrow.