Talk to any parent who has used in vitro fertilization to have a child, and you will probably hear a story of someone who desperately wanted a baby and, after years of infertility, was able to have one. And they likely went to great expense and through an emotional roller coaster to get there. By some definitions, that’s as pro-life as you can get.
But the recent Alabama Supreme Court decision defining frozen embryos as children under state law threw the future of IVF in that state into doubt and raised the question of whether IVF will remain accessible in Georgia, too.
It also put a spotlight on a deeply held position in some conservative circles that IVF is a morally dubious technology that should not exist as it does today. For many, stopping IVF as we know it was not an unintended consequence of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, it was a goal.
One of the leading conservative voices on the issue is the influential Heritage Foundation, which came out against a bill last month from Illinois Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who used IVF to have both of her children. Her bill would guarantee the same right to IVF services that President Joe Biden called for in his State of the Union speech last week.
Emma Waters, who is a part of Heritage’s Center for Life, Religion, and Family, called the Duckworth bill protecting IVF a “smokescreen” that would lead to cloning and genetic editing. That followed her declaration last year that with the fall of Roe v. Wade, IVF is the “new battleground” in the “war to protect life.”
“IVF, as it’s practiced today, is not pro-life,” Waters wrote. “The practices and methods commonly used violate the integrity of pre-born children.”
But the Heritage view of IVF is not widely held, possibly because so many Americans either know women who have used IVF to have children or have used it themselves. A CBS News/YouGov poll last week found that 86% of those surveyed said IVF should be legal for women trying to get pregnant, while 14 percent said it should be illegal.
One influential conservative in Georgia is in the 86%. “I don’t believe that it’s anti-life to support IVF,” said Martha Zoller, who sits on the board of the Georgia Life Alliance. “It’s the definition of creating life. But because you are doing it in a medical setting, there’s a great responsibility to be sure to respect the possible outcomes.”
Although the Alabama legislature quickly passed a measure to give IVF clinics legal protections to resume their operations, it did not address the underlying Supreme Court language defining frozen embryos as people. The new law also did not persuade all of Alabama’s IVF clinics to re-open. The Center for Reproductive Care in Mobile said in a statement that it won’t reopen until it has a full understanding of the legal risks of resuming IVF services in Alabama.
Stephen Stetson, the director of Planned Parenthood Alabama, said the Alabama Legislature was lobbied by “an avalanche” of women wearing identical t-shirts, pushing baby strollers with their children conceived through IVF in them. But he said the law that passed may not last long.
“There’s a great degree of skepticism whether this would withstand judicial scrutiny, should it go back to the Alabama Supreme Court,” he said. “The personhood amendment explicitly constrains the ability of the legislature to act on this issue....So we may see this thing blink into, and out of, existence pretty quickly.”
All of this raises the question of what could happen in Georgia with IVF. As my colleague Maya T. Prabhu has reported, Georgia’s six-week abortion ban also has “personhood” language, which gives embryos the same legal rights as children. But unlike the Alabama Supreme Court’s definition, the Georgia law refers to embryos “in the womb,” rather than frozen embryos like the ones used in IVF. That means that, so far, IVF clinics have been open for business as usual.
But Democratic state Sen. Elena Parent from Atlanta said lawmakers should proactively protect IVF to give families and providers assurances that they can operate safely into the future. Parent has introduced a bill to explicitly say that embryos outside of a human uterus are not legally considered children. She said that would protect not just IVF, but also stem cell research and other medical technologies as they are in Georgia today.
Lawmakers could follow Alabama’s lead and indemnify IVF providers from legal action in the same way the General Assembly has protected other industries it values. Or they could take up Parent’s bill and eliminate the uncertainty altogether.
The next move needs to come from Republican leaders in the state, who have uniformly spoken in support of IVF, but not taken any steps to guarantee access to it in the future.
A spokesman for Speaker Jon Burns told me the Speaker “fully supports IVF and if there are avenues to continue supporting it, we will certainly be open to those conversations.”
Likewise, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones told the AJC in a statement, “I’m pro-life and I believe in helping families that want to bring a life into this world. IVF should be protected.”
Gov Brian Kemp told a Politico Governors Summit last month that he is comfortable with the idea of IVF generally.
“You have a lot of people out there in this country that they wouldn’t have children if it weren’t for that,” Kemp said. But as the AJC reported at the time, a spokesman said the governor won’t be introducing any new legislative priorities before the session ends a few weeks from now.
Like so many politically fraught issues, the details of what lawmakers support matter. Are they comfortable with the idea of IVF, or are they seeking restrictions on the processes that fertility doctors use?
More broadly, is using IVF to start or grow a family inherently pro-life, as so many parents who have used it believe, or against pro-life principles, as some prominent conservatives argue?
Georgia leaders have just a few weeks left this legislative session to show Georgia voters where they stand.
