A Twitter employee had to stop IVF treatment after being laid off by Elon Musk, report says

• A Twitter employee says she had to stop IVF treatment after being laid off by Elon Musk.
• She told Wired she was promised that health cover would continue for a year after a takeover.

A Twitter employee said she had to stop IVF treatment after losing her job following Elon Musk's takeover.

The woman, who did not want to be named, told Wired that Twitter had offered to cover costs of about $24,000 in 2022 and 2023 for fertility treatment for those struggling to conceive.

The woman said she started the artificial insemination process with a company called Carrot. She told Wired that her chances of getting pregnant naturally were "almost zero" because she had a blocked Fallopian tube: "The only option I have is IVF."

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IVF involves extracting a woman's eggs, fertilizing them in a laboratory and transferring the resulting embryos into the uterus.

Data from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that just over 326,000 assisted reproductive technology cycles were performed in the United States in 2020, resulting in almost 80,000 babies.

Wired reported that it was now very unlikely that the woman would be able to continue the lengthy and expensive treatment because she had lost her health insurance along with her job.

According to the report, some other Twitter employees managed to use their benefits to pay for a cycle of IVF treatment. Others had been unable to secure appointments before their contract ended.

The woman told Wired: "It's a heartbreaking thing to be honest ... to be that close to having a child then being told that it's gone."

Twitter staff were offered a severance package of up to three months depending on their location. Five employees who filed a lawsuit against Twitter on November 1 said they had been promised at least two months' severance pay, bonus plan compensation, the cash value of vested Twitter shares, and healthcare coverage.

They say these promises were not kept when Musk laid off about 3,700 staff on November 4.

Twitter didn't immediately respond to a request for comment by Insider.

Are you a current or ex-Twitter employee? Contact Sam Tabahriti from a non-work address at stabahriti@insider.com or by Twitter DM at @samtabahriti