The Chick Mission's Fight
- Cancer survivors Amanda Rice and Tracy Weiss founded The Chick Mission after finding out fertility preservation wasn’t covered by insurance. Their organization raises awareness about the issue and helps financially assist other women’s fertility journey.
- Rice is a three-time cancer survivor who went through intensive chemotherapy; Weiss was diagnosed with cervical cancer and needed to have a hysterectomy.
- Rice and Weiss are currently advocating for Texas Bill 293, which would require health benefit plans to provide coverage for fertility preservation services to a person who will receive medically necessary treatment such as surgery, chemotherapy or radiation.
Spurred by anger, both Weiss and Rice decided to take matters into their own hands and create an organization that would help other women facing this problem. The Chick Mission was born.
Read More“We want to help any woman from any background, color, ethnicity. You’re a cancer survivor, so you’re unfortunately one of the members of our group now. The club that no one wants to join.” Amanda Rice
Similarly, when Weiss was 30-years-old, she visited her physician due to extreme menstrual bleeding. Her doctor told Weiss she was being “hysterical” and not to worry, but Weiss refused to back down and chose to be her own advocate. She then visited another gynecologist, who found a tumor in her cervix and was diagnosed with uterine and cervical cancer.
Related: I Wanted My Doctor To Like Me, Then He Missed My Breast Cancer
“I was taught that doctors are learned scholars that have all the answers and you should just follow the rules and do what the doctors tell you,” Weiss tells SurvivorNet. “I was more comfortable with a female doctor and especially in the OB-GYN world, and she told me I was being a drama queen.”
Being dismissed by your doctor and receiving a cancer diagnosis is difficult enough, but both Weiss and Rice were in for yet another shock when they started to pursue treatment and started thinking about future family goals.
A Shocking Discovery
After coming face-to-face with cancer treatment, both Rice and Weiss started looking towards the future. For Rice, who was diagnosed with melanoma once and breast cancer twice, she knew she needed to undergo intensive chemotherapy to treat the recurrence. Weiss had a hysterectomy (removal of the uterus) for treatment. After hearing about how this treatment can impact fertility among women, The Chick Mission founders assumed that their insurance would pay for them to freeze their eggs. Through this process, the eggs which are harvested in the ovaries are frozen unfertilized and stored for later use. The egg can be thawed and be implanted into the uterus along with sperm. This process can help women have children in the future despite any complications they might have experienced from the cancer treatment.
“I love to use this analogy because it makes sense to me. You break a bone, insurance pays for you to set the bone and x-ray the bone,” Weiss says. “They are removing your uterus, insurance will pay for you to freeze your eggs…It’ll be okay. No, it was not okay. They said no so many different ways.”
Related: Freezing Eggs Or Embryos: What Should I Do?
Both Rice and Weiss were told by their insurance companies that fertility preservation is only considered for those 35 or older who had been trying to get pregnant for over six months. Fortunately for Rice and Weiss, they were able to pay for egg freezing out of their own pockets. On average, a person can pay up to $40,000 for both the procedure and storage of the eggs. However, they acknowledged that many women facing cancer aren’t able to fund fertility preservation and also likely do not know that insurance companies don’t cover the costs. Once connecting with other women who had gone through similar experiences, they created The Chick Mission to both educate and assist those who need help.
The cancer community and the medical community are so fixated on saving your life. Yes, every cancer patient does not want it to be a death sentence, but what happens after you saved the life? What about the quality of the life? I think that’s something that needs to be looked at and with a little bit of information, education and preparation, you can give that to women easily Tracy Weiss
A Fight for Change
The Chick Mission aims to educate women about fertility conservation and help fund egg freezing through grants. Since receiving their first grant in February 2018, the nonprofit has received 100 more grants and expanded their funding service to five states outside of New York.
Now, they’re taking their message into legislative ground. Currently, both Rice and Weiss are stationed in Austin, Texas, to advocate and lobby for Texas House Bill 293, which would require health benefit plans to provide coverage for fertility preservation services to a person who will receive medically necessary treatment such as surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation. Representative Nicole Collier, a fellow cancer survivor, introduced the bill. Utah recently passed a bill that expands Medicaid coverage to financially help young cancer patients who are undergoing treatments that could risk their fertility. Plus, in 2005, Rice personally was able to see Connecticut pass a bill which required most insurance companies to cover fertility costs and also treatment for those impacted by infertility.
“The ultimate goal of the The Chick Mission is to be out of business because every state law has changed” – Amanda Rice
“We want to help any woman from any background, color, ethnicity,” Rice says. “You’re a cancer survivor, so you’re unfortunately one of the members of our group now. The club that no one wants to join.”
By connecting with fellow cancer survivors, The Chick Mission has been able to build an army of people pushing for change, seeking to help, and sharing their stories with other women to prove no one is alone in their fight. Whether it’s raising awareness or writing letters to state representatives, The Chick Mission won’t stop fighting until every state enacts laws that requires fertility coverage for every woman diagnosed with cancer.
“Ten states have changed their law so far. Texas would be number eleven,” Rice says. “The ultimate goal of The Chick Mission is to be out of business because every state law has changed and maybe at the federal level, that would be amazing.”
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