Editorial: The Alabama IVF ruling should worry us all, even in Montana
I remember where I was when I first heard about Alabama’s Supreme Court decision regarding in vitro fertilization and the personhood-status of frozen embryos. It’s the same way I remember exactly where I was when I heard about the 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
I imagine it’s similar to the way my mom remembered getting the call about the twin towers while driving home from the fertility clinic seven months before my brother and I were born as successful IVF babies.
In 2022, I was sitting in a hotel in Paris, and last Tuesday, I was walking on campus between the education building and the music building, wondering how we got to this point in only two short years.
IVF might not be at the top of most college students’ minds like it is mine, but rulings like this, even when they’re far away, have the potential to impact us all. They set precedents for future cases resulting in restricted reproductive rights.
IVF is the process where eggs collected from ovaries are fertilized with sperm in a lab. The fertilized egg, or embryo, is then implanted back into a uterus, as described by the Mayo Clinic.
Forbes estimates a single IVF cycle can range from $15,000 to $30,000. The average success rate on the first attempt is around 20-35% according to The IVF Center, but varies with age.
Approximately 2% of children in the United States are born through IVF, one of the most effective treatments for infertility. It’s the reason my twin brother and I are alive. My mom estimates they spent around $50,000 throughout the IVF process.
In 2022, I worried the language in the Dobbs decision opened up a broader conversation about reproductive rights and IVF. Then last Wednesday, I started getting the news-app notifications. As one New York Times article read, Alabama health systems “paused most IVF procedures after the state’s Supreme Court said embryos should be considered children.” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre pointed to the overturning of Roe as opening the door for Alabama’s decision.
Some will argue the case should be considered in its context: it was a wrongful death lawsuit after a hospital patient mishandled and destroyed stored frozen embryos. It invoked an old Alabama law allowing parents to sue over the death of a minor child, and the state court ruled frozen embryos are children under the law. But in reality, this ruling raises questions nationally about all aspects of IVF.
Freezing surplus embryos is common — if one cycle fails, it can be tried again, or if a patient wants multiple children, they don’t have to go through the surgical process multiple times. It is estimated there are 1.5 million frozen embryos across the U.S. After such a ruling, where do they stand now?
A picture from my mom’s IVF procedure.
Sheri Johnson / Contributed
An amicus brief filed by the Medical Association of the State of Alabama said if the court ruled as it did, it could “require such embryos to remain in cryogenic storage even after the couple who underwent the IVF treatment have died and potentially even after the couple’s children, grandchildren, and even great grandchildren have died.”
The news of IVF procedures in Alabama pausing, unsure of how to proceed, is proof for me that lawmakers and judges aren’t fully considering the consequences of their decisions.
Some Republicans have raced to counteract the nightmare this decision created, seeking to protect IVF. They should have seen this coming, before any poor Alabamians’ procedures were paused.
If that weren’t enough, what really annoyed me was seeing the IVF news headlines get weird and weirder as the week went on. All of a sudden it was the center of a strange national debate where a bunch of politicians were suddenly defending IVF, using it as a political win. As if their blessing suddenly made it OK when it shouldn’t have been up for debate in the first place.
In 2023, Gov. Greg Gianforte signed a bill making Montana the 16th state to require insurance coverage for fertility preservation procedures like egg retrievals in young cancer patients. While not directly related to IVF, it signals the states’ dedication to preserving the sanctity of infertility treatment.
For the time being, we’re sitting pretty in Montana. Abortion is still legal here, and the right to privacy is still protected in the state’s constitution. But if I’ve learned anything from the past two years, these things can change in an instant. If a procedure helping families have children isn’t safe in a political party that commonly brands itself as pro-life, it’s hard to believe anything is safe. If Montana mounts a decisive enough Republican supermajority in the Legislature alongside a Republican governor, we won’t be safe from having our rights undermined, either.
Naivety isn’t going to cut it anymore. IVF is an important procedure, one that doesn’t deserve mishandling by sloppy lawmakers and poorly thought out court rulings. I’m sick of seeing the way I came into this world questioned by those with little understanding of its nuance.
When I was little, I told anyone who would listen that I was made in a test tube. Now, when I talk about IVF, it’s hard not to get emotional. We should watch how Alabama charts its course with IVF, especially if it ever actually makes it to the nation’s highest court’s chopping block.
-McKenna Johnson, Online Editor
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