{"id":929830,"date":"2024-09-13T16:06:20","date_gmt":"2024-09-13T13:06:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=929830"},"modified":"2024-09-13T16:06:20","modified_gmt":"2024-09-13T13:06:20","slug":"fertility-doctors-and-their-patients-fear-ivf-is-at-risk-in-a-second-trump-presidency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=929830","title":{"rendered":"Fertility Doctors and Their Patients Fear IVF Is at Risk in a Second Trump Presidency"},"content":{"rendered":"
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BIRTH RIGHTS<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

To Support IVF Access, You Have to Support Abortion Access<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
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Trump may say he’s a “leader” on IVF, but you can’t cherry-pick women’s reproductive rights.<\/div>\n
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By <\/span>Fiorella Valdesolo<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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Justin Metz<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n
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In August 2022, when Amanda Zurawski was 18 weeks pregnant, she experienced a preterm premature rupture of membranes, a catastrophic condition that\u2019s fatal to the fetus and can pose serious risks to the mother as well. She and her husband rushed to their local Texas hospital but, because there was still fetal cardiac activity detected, she details in a subsequent lawsuit against the state that attending doctors refused to terminate her pregnancy. Texas, following the overturn of Roe v. Wade<\/em> in 2022, had banned all abortions, except to save the life of the pregnant patient or prevent serious physical impairment. Zurawski says that according to doctors, her case didn\u2019t qualify. After her health deteriorated dramatically, doctors finally performed an abortion. Because of the delay, though, she would develop an infection, go into sepsis, and spend days in the ICU fighting for her life. Zurawski survived but the traumatic experience impacted her ability to conceive in the future, and doctors recommended that she not try to carry a baby again. She and her husband began IVF (in vitro fertilization) intending to conceive via surrogate and created a number of frozen embryos. But she moved them out of Texas this year, terrified that the state could make its laws around IVF more restrictive.<\/p>\n

She is not alone in her anxiety. I started reporting this story after Allure<\/em> spoke to 30 IVF patients earlier this year about the unspoken realities of the treatment. Several had shared concerns about how the shifting political landscape could impact laws around IVF in their respective states. When I began to spend time in the #ivfjourney corner of TikTok, I found similar worries expressed again and again.<\/p>\n

They are worries that heightened dramatically after a February 2024 decision by Alabama\u2019s Supreme Court that ruled frozen embryos are unborn children, meaning IVF clinics could be subject to wrongful death civil liability. Riley, a self-proclaimed \u201cIVF girlie\u201d in Florida who goes by @journey.to.baby.gersch on TikTok, posted an anxious video from her doctor\u2019s office that month with the caption: \u201cMy heart is breaking for all couples who were planning to seek IVF treatment, and currently going through IVF treatment in Alabama. As if IVF isn\u2019t emotionally and physically challenging already. Terrified of Florida following suit. We have two precious PGT normal embryos on ice waiting for transfer. Can I claim our embryos as dependents on our taxes? This is insane.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Hank Greely, a professor of law at Stanford who specializes in the ethical, legal, and social implications of biomedical technologies, the Alabama decision was both odd and narrow, focusing on the damages a couple could claim if their embryos were destroyed as a result of negligence. \u201cThe headlines in the news said Alabama Supreme Court decides frozen embryos are children, which was true except they decided it only for the purposes of the Wrongful Death Act,\u201d says Greely, citing a statute dating back over a century that pertains to a civil method of holding someone accountable.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The Alabama decision had immediate medical implications for anyone in the midst of the IVF process in the state. \u201cIt contradicts science and not only misrepresents the complexities of reproductive technology but also threatens to undermine the rights of patients and the medical ethics fundamental to our profession,\u201d says Kristin Bendikson, MD, a double board-certified reproductive endocrinologist and ob-gyn, and the chief medical officer at Kindbody, a fertility clinic with locations nationwide. The broadly inflammatory language of the judge\u2019s written opinion (see Chief Justice Tom Parker\u2019s Biblical quotes and the repeated usage of the term \u201cextra-uterine children\u201d) threw gasoline on what should have been a small fire, says Greely. And while the extreme and misguided nature of the decision led the Alabama legislature to respond within weeks to enact statutes to protect IVF, the fact that it even happened was enough to panic many families who were in the process elsewhere. \u201cFamilies all across the country fear their access to reproductive health care is at risk because of that decision and, sadly, they are not mistaken,\u201d says Dr. Bendikson.<\/p>\n

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Meet the experts:<\/strong><\/div>\n
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  • Hank Greely is a professor of law at Stanford who specializes in the ethical, legal, and social implications of biomedical technologies.<\/li>\n
  • Kristin Bendikson, MD, is a double board-certified reproductive endocrinologist and chief medical officer at Kindbody, a fertility clinic with locations nationwide.<\/li>\n
  • Julian Escobar, MD, is a double board-certified ob-gyn and specialist in reproductive endocrinology whose fertility practice is in Dallas.<\/li>\n
  • Jorie Dugan is human rights counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, US Human Rights Program.<\/li>\n
  • Cathryn Oakley is the senior director of legal policy at the Human Rights Campaign.<\/li>\n
  • Marcelle Cedars, MD, is a double board-certified fertility specialist and reproductive endocrinologist and the director of the UCSF Center for Reproductive Health.<\/li>\n
  • Lora Shahine, MD, is a double board-certified reproductive endocrinologist at Pacific NW Fertility in Seattle, a clinical associate professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, cofounder of the nonprofit Doctors for Fertility, and host of the Baby or Bust<\/em> fertility podcast.<\/li>\n
  • Divya Yerramilli, MD, is a board-certified radiation oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.<\/li>\n
  • Sean Tipton is the chief advocacy and policy officer for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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    Despite Donald Trump’s recent claims on the campaign trail that he fully supports IVF\u2014and would even somehow make the expensive treatment free\u2014few believe that women’s reproductive rights and IVF would actually be protected in a second Trump presidency. In his last term, he implemented more than 60% of the recommendations of the Heritage Foundation\u2014the extremist architects of Project 2025\u2014and nominated three deeply conservative Supreme Court justices pushed by the group. And as reported by the New York Times<\/em>, Trump\u2019s 2024 running mate, Senator JD Vance, wrote the introduction to a 2017 Heritage Foundation report that argued in a series of essays, among other things, against IVF access; he was also the keynote speaker at its public release in Washington, DC.<\/p>\n

    To support IVF, you must also support abortion. They cannot be siloed. \u201cThey are two sides of the same coin,\u201d says Marcelle Cedars, MD, a double board-certified fertility specialist and reproductive endocrinologist and the director of the UCSF Center for Reproductive Health. \u201cReproductive care and choice is having children when you want them (IVF, if necessary) and not having them when you don\u2019t (contraception and abortion).\u201d It\u2019s all interconnected and when there are attacks on one aspect of reproductive rights, there are implications for the whole spectrum of care. One social media post that went viral this summer read: \u201cThe treatment for ectopic pregnancy is abortion. The treatment for a septic uterus is abortion. The treatment for a miscarriage that your body won\u2019t release is abortion. If you can\u2019t get those abortions, you die.\u201d Between them, the 30 IVF patients that Allure spoke with earlier this year had had 65 miscarriages or chemical pregnancies (a miscarriage that happens within the first five weeks). One was hospitalized for 10 days after she says Georgia’s \u201cheartbeat bill\u201d prevented her from getting the treatment she needed during a miscarriage. (That bill was overturned on September 30, 2024.) It\u2019s not surprising that states with the most restrictive abortion laws also have the highest maternal mortality rates.<\/p>\n