Fertility Medicine After Roe
By Nairi Shirinian and Meghna Mukherjee,
Ms. Magazine
| 07. 13. 2022
It’s no coincidence that the world’s first IVF baby was born just five years after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. IVF, or in vitro fertilization, is often mistakenly thought to be irrelevant to abortion debates. After all, people spend tens of thousands of dollars on reproductive technologies like IVF to help them become pregnant, while the conversation surrounding abortion largely concerns unexpected and often unwanted pregnancies.
But, upon a closer look, Roe not only empowered millions of women with bodily autonomy by constitutionally protecting their right to terminate a pregnancy—the decision also enabled the rapid growth of new technologies beyond IVF to assist human reproduction.
With Roe reversed, several states are poised to ban abortions; trigger laws in at least 13 U.S. states will immediately prohibit abortion without exceptions. Under many of these state laws, ‘life’ will be defined as the moment an egg is fertilized. These laws threaten those undergoing (and those performing) procedures, such as IVF or third-party gamete donation, by limiting or prohibiting the freezing or discarding of embryos—a process fundamental to successful fertility treatments. Researchers...
Related Articles
By Azeen Ghorayshi and Sarah Kliff, The New York Times | 08.12.2024
An emerging movement against in vitro fertilization is driving some doctors and patients in red states to move or destroy frozen embryos.
The embryo migration is most striking in Alabama, where the State Supreme Court ruled in February that embryos...
By Editorial Staff, The Lancet | 07.20.2024
Image by DrKontogianniIVF from Wikimedia Commons
Despite major advances in securing sexual and reproductive rights globally, one aspect is continually neglected: infertility. Evolving gender norms and financial precariousness have led to delayed childbearing, which increases infertility in both males and...
By Staff, AP-NORC | 07.12.2024
Image by Dr. Jayesh Amin from Wikimedia Commons licensed under CC by-SA 3.0
Most adults support protecting access to in vitro fertilization, or IVF, a type of fertility treatment where eggs are combined with sperm outside the body in a...
By Julia Black and Margaux MacColl, The Information [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 07.19.2024
When venture capitalist Jack Abraham first began dating his wife, Gabriella Massamillo, he insisted on one condition: that when they were ready to have children, she’d be willing to conceive using in vitro fertilization. Abraham had lost both his mother...