The future of IVF is in jeopardy

Today, I am a mother. But before I became a mother, I was a woman like so many others struggling to get pregnant and grappling with the emotional devastation of infertility. Yearning to build a family, I turned to in-vitro fertilization (IVF) in hopes of bringing home a baby. On my family-building journey, I was also one of the countless women who needed a lifesaving dilation and curettage procedure (D&C) for an ectopic pregnancy — a fertilized egg growing outside of the uterus — for which I also needed emergency surgery and took the immunosuppressant medication methotrexate. 

Ultimately, I turned to adoption to become a parent and became an advocate supporting people who build their families in many different ways, including through fertility treatment. Following the Supreme Court’s July decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ending federally recognized abortion rights, proven medical treatments like IVF become the collateral damage of the battle to dismantle reproductive freedom. That is why our organization unequivocally supports the Right to Build Families Act in Congress, introduced by Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) along with Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.). This national legislation is urgently required to protect IVF across the country, as the end of Roe v. Wade has painfully laid bare a patchwork of reproductive freedoms defined by state borders. 

Even without overt state laws prohibiting IVF procedures, the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision is having a chilling effect on people seeking IVF in certain states — as providers and patients fear legal ramifications of state abortion laws. We cannot allow state legislatures to pass laws that will block their constituents’ dreams of becoming parents. This bill guarantees that IVF will remain an option for all Americans, regardless of state reproductive policies.   

Medical professionals and would-be parents are perplexed by new laws restricting reproductive freedoms, while certain state legislatures are gearing up to enact new laws that would effectively make IVF impossible through fetal “personhood” legislation. The IVF process involves creating multiple embryos in the hopes that at least one can result in the birth of a baby. But if a state defines a fertilized egg as a person, then allowing any “harm” to come to that microscopic embryo could be potentially considered manslaughter or even murder. The Dobbs decision has opened the floodgates for restrictions and by extension might inhibit standard procedures like embryo freezing. I faced agonizing decisions on what to do with the embryos created during IVF treatment — would-be parents enduring that choice don’t need the added worry of possible criminal charges.  

Moreover, family building is threatened by outlawing safe abortion care, often needed when nonviable pregnancies occur. Extremely safe for patients, the D&C, which I had, is the same procedure whether used to help safely manage incomplete miscarriage or to perform early-stage abortions. Abortion bans threaten access to D&C’s because physicians in certain states could be required to prove that it is needed to treat a miscarriage and not to perform an abortion. After trying so hard to sustain a pregnancy, a person enduring a devastating miscarriage should not then be subject to legal limbo and potential medical danger to safely treat it. 

Challenges on the journey to parenthood can be enormously difficult, painful and isolating to navigate. Those taking on this challenge should be able to stay with it for as long as they want or can, anywhere in this country. National legislation protecting fertility treatment will ensure that its emotional strain is not compounded by fear of criminal prosecution for using the best and most advanced medical assistance to try to build a family. 

Our elected officials should be making it easier, not harder, for people to fulfill their dream of having a baby. Former Republican Vice President Mike Pence has voiced his support for legal protections for fertility treatments despite his staunch anti-abortion stance. But the new legal confusion surrounding reproductive health care is creating despair among those who dream of a healthy pregnancy and baby. Lawmakers must support the Right to Build Families Act to ensure a national right to family-building for those who choose to pursue fertility treatments and ironclad protections for them and the medical professionals helping them. 

Barb Collura is president and CEO of RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association.