Abbey Crain is a creative strategist at Reckon and the creator and editor of the Honey newsletter. Crain has covered reproductive justice and gender issues across the South for the last six years.
I almost didn’t write this.
I stopped writing when Roe v. Wade was overturned. I had just started IVF treatment, abortion was illegal in Alabama. What was the point of caring, of putting myself out there? I had screamed and hollered about the slippery slope that would inevitably bulldoze reproductive care in our already suffering healthcare landscape.
I needed a break from caring. I was tired of making myself a target, of being the “girl who talks about abortion.”
But In February I became the story I had long warned others about. I was one of the families in Alabama whose IVF care was affected by the Alabama Supreme Court Ruling giving human rights to embryos obtained through IVF.
President Donald Trump told a room full of women Wednesday that he learned all about IVF from the “fantastically attractive” Katie Britt, calling himself the “father of IVF.” But it was his nominated U.S. Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade; that started the landslide that befalls a world without the right to abortion—the long-predicted slippery slope—that has now impacted IVF care. And it was Britt’s Alabama republican-only Supreme Court who halted IVF care in Alabama, leaving a wake of emotional devastation.
Vice President Kamala Harris invited me to the White House back in February to tell my story on how the loss of Roe and Alabama’s religious-inspired legislation impacted my attempts to start a family.
Despite sitting on a couch across from the vice president of the United States, despite the droves of women who showed up to the Alabama State House to stand for our right to IVF, I questioned myself. ‘Am I making a big deal out of everything?’ I asked her.
Harris reminded me that gaslighting smart women into thinking their problems are a matter of hysterics was the oldest play in the book men use to keep us in our heads and away from making change. She encouraged me to tell my story and be loud.
Next month I will transfer one of my embryos for the first time in my IVF journey. I’m excited and so hopeful. But I’m also terrified. I’m scared it won’t work. I’m scared it will work, but that I could miscarry. That the reason I haven’t been able to get pregnant isn’t because of something wrong with the embryo, but there’s something else wrong with me.
I’m scared of being heartbroken. I’m scared of the unknown. I’m scared to write this. And I’m scared of being pregnant in Alabama.
A few weeks ago I got a call from a former fertility clinic in the middle of my work day. They wanted to get my consent and bill me to move my embryos out of state. Many fertility clinics in Alabama are working to send fertilized embryos out of state to avoid a repeat of February’s chaos should Alabama again use religious doctrine and our state constitution’s “sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children” amendment to supersede folks’ healthcare.
I am acutely aware of the ways Alabama has stolen healthcare choices from women and queer folks and their doctors because I reported on it. I’ve covered it for six years for AL.com and Reckon, which isn’t a long time in the grand scheme of a career. But it’s a hell of a long time to try to have a baby.
I covered our no-exceptions abortion ban in 2019. I watched and reported as our state legislators stumbled through the basics of sex education. I rode down the state house elevator with two legislators who fist bumped each other, congratulating each other on passing the bill that would ban abortion in Alabama.
That week – despite, and maybe because of the chaos that would soon follow the slippery slope of loss of reproductive rights sure to level Alabama’s precariously balanced healthcare ecosystem – I started fertility treatment for the first time.
I remember Rep. Terri Collins saying the no-exceptions abortion ban was intentionally inflexible and promised to revisit the specifics after the bill reached the Supreme Court. It was written without providing exceptions for rape, incest, or health of the mother for the sole purpose of inviting a challenge to the Supreme Court and overturning Roe v. Wade.
“This bill is about challenging Roe v. Wade and protecting the lives of the unborn because an unborn baby is a person who deserves love and protection,” Collins said. “I have prayed my way through this bill. This is the way we get where we want to get eventually.”
I along with every other woman in this state was repeatedly told they don’t matter. That no matter the circumstances, the contents of our womb matter more than the life I want for myself.
A few weeks ago a study was released highlighting that half of all “pregnancy-related” arrests made after the fall of Roe were in Alabama. ProPublica reported that two mothers in Georgia died of septic shock after doctors refused to perform D&Cs. These laws force doctors to risk prosecution for providing basic healthcare.
According to Alabama law, my embryos, which are just that—mine—have the same rights as living, breathing, loving, working, writing, painting me. And doctors across Alabama don’t agree on what they’re supposed to do with this genetic material because the state upended the agreed upon protocols after the fall of Roe and the subsequent state supreme court ruling.
I had honestly forgotten about these embryos. These leftovers. They were created two years ago during my second round of IVF. After genetic testing, they were deemed “incompatible with life” due to genetic abnormalities. Genetic testing is used in the IVF process to rule out embryos likely to cause the pregnant person to miscarry. It takes out one of the heartbreaking steps in infertility care, shielding patients from inevitable loss. It’s a secret sauce of efficient science and kindness for families who have tried for too long. There has already been so much loss and heartbreak.
Genetically abnormal embryos are usually discarded as medical waste. Sometimes, they are donated to scientific research. In very rare cases, they are “compassionately transferred” into the patient at a time in the menstrual cycle when the embryo doesn’t have a chance to implant and grow, inevitably absorbed into the uterus. But some patients, including myself, now must pay for these embryos to be shipped to another state.
It.
Me.
They.
I struggle with the language.
When my husband and I found out these embryos couldn’t be used to start our family two years ago, I was devastated (again, because I’ve been devastated many times in this process. Devastation is my friend now). I mourned what could have been, that I wouldn’t have to endure another Christmas surrounded by others’ swollen bellies and new toy giggles while I still dreamed of mine. It would be another holiday season of family traditions without the family I so wanted to include.
But that’s just what they are—what could have been. To me, it/they are an idea of a possibility, a dashed dream, a could-have-but-wasn’t.
Senate Republicans blocked the most recent bill to protect access to IVF across the country. Britt voted against the bill, accusing Democrats of political showboating as they tried to pass the bill so close to the presidential election, but voted against her and Ted Cruz’s IVF protection bill earlier this year.
The bill sponsored by Britt and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was widely criticized for allowing individual states to determine their own IVF health and safety standards, which in Alabama’s case would only be a detriment to the families going through IVF, as our state Supreme Court has already tested the waters and interfered with family’s healthcare. The hastily-passed IVF protection bill that allowed fertility clinics to resume IVF procedures doesn’t actually solve the problem of fetal personhood. And some politicians have warned it is unconstitutional based on our 2018 amendment.
According to Alabama, the embryos being shipped out of state solely because of a state ruling calling fertilized eggs “babies,” are in fact children to be cataloged and protected. And if we follow that same logic, would discarding these Alabama embryos out of state be considered an out of state abortion? Would these families be arrested by Steve Marshall, who vowed to prosecute people who helped women travel out of state for abortions? Would I be arrested? I hope you’ll at least wait until after my transfer.
Sen. Katie Britt said it was the “fall of fearmongering,” but I’m rightfully terrified. I’m scared because Marshall has refused to clarify whether it is legal to tell Alabamians how to get an abortion out of state. I am scared because this state has a history, and honestly a penchant, for prosecuting women for the outcomes of their pregnancies.
I’m scared of putting myself out there like I am right now because of the increasingly hostile political climate stoked by the very rhetoric Britt ran her Senate campaign on. And I’m scared my transfer won’t work and it’ll be another Christmas without my baby.
Like many folks in Alabama, I have to decide what to do with the embryos, my embryos.
I have to pay to have them, my own biological material, even the ones with genetic anomalies incompatible with life, sent beyond my home’s borders because of politics
I wish I could play the same games politicians have been playing with my reproductive rights. I want to pack a Yeti cooler with dry ice and drop ‘em off at one of those “baby boxes” in firehouses. I wonder if I could stay anonymous. I want to give them away to one of those nice families who insist they can just adopt up all the aborted and unwanted babies, while our foster system sits full. I want to mail them to Jay Mitchell, author of the IVF state supreme court ruling, to babysit them indefinitely. Or maybe some nice woman from the megachurch down the road could transfer them and miscarry for me. If a man had to miscarry, surely I wouldn’t be writing this essay.
President Donald Trump said in a rally in North Carolina that women need not worry, that he would “take care of them.” He has assured the public that IVF would be protected, covered by insurance even. But when I attended an IVF panel put on by the Federalist Society in Montgomery last month, the folks in the ears of the “powers that be” aren’t done regulating family planning healthcare.
Dr. Randy Brinson, president of the host Christian Coalition of Alabama and a gastroenterologist who endorsed Roy Moore post sexual-assault allegations, told AL.com the panel could “give advice to the governor and the Legislature” on future IVF legislation. Other attendees included a retired OBGYN who parked an ultrasound van outside abortion clinics and the proprietor of a children’s home.
The panelists of the Federalist Society in Alabama are decidedly focused on regulating IVF as a matter of ethics, that each embryo created through infertility care should be accounted for and protected, and that it’s a moral problem that it allows same-sex couples to create families.
Mike DeBoer, a law professor from Faulkner University, led the panel and described the modern IVF industry as the “Wild West,” and lacking regulation. I could have shown him all the paperwork I’ve had to sign and the hoops I’ve had to jump through, but alas they didn’t ask me—or anyone well-versed on reproductive technology for that matter.
Notably missing on the panel was a medical professional who had performed IVF, a patient who had undergone IVF, or a doctor versed in the most up-to-date obstetric practices. The misinformation was astounding. One panelist wrongly assured the crowd that ectopic pregnancies are rare in the United States and can be “corrected” with “methotrexate or a laparoscopy.” And DeBoer chalked up the importance of harvesting more than one egg at a time up to cost-effectiveness.
It is complicated. I’ll give them that. IVF is a numbers game. You harvest the highest, safest number of eggs from the patient’s ovaries in the hopes that a fraction of the eggs successfully fertilize, a fraction of those develop past day five, and a fraction of those show no signs of genetic or cellular abnormalities, so that one embryo can be transferred into the uterus. A strategic, medically tested, compassionate numbers game that could now be weaponized in the name of “creation order.”
They were clear in their intention. Alabama should re-evaluate the previously passed IVF protection bill in accordance with how it aligns with religious doctrine.
Notably in attendance was Eric Johnston, pro-life lawyer and author of Alabama’s no-exceptions abortion ban. After the panel, I asked him what changes he thinks need to be made to IVF in light of the abortion ban he wrote. I told him about my own IVF journey, my embryos, and he dodged and weaved, regaling me of his gay roommate at Auburn who flew to San Francisco to look through a catalog of the prettiest women whose eggs he could use to have his own children.
“What should I do with the embryos I can’t implant next month?” I asked.
He asked if I wanted to sell them.
“No, I’m just worried the laws in Alabama will force my doctor to move them out of state or that I will have to store them indefinitely.”
“I would be ok with giving them to science,” Johnston said.
It was never about personhood. It was never about “life begins at conception.” It was always about control.
Johnston then put his hand on my shoulder and prayed over me.
But I don’t want prayers.
I want a baby. And I want Alabama to stay the hell out of my way.
I wear a Virgin Mary pendant around my neck. I pray to her before every procedure. I meditated on the full moon and I read the sacred stories of the women who have waged this war of infertility before me. I honor my humanity by sharing my story and talking about all the things usually unbecoming of southern women.
Like most folks, I pick and choose, contradict and subvert. I curse and pray, hope, dream, hug, kiss, yell, want, taste, stomp, swim. A whole universe inside me.
It’s human nature.
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Publish date : 2024-10-18 04:23:00
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Author : theamericannews
Publish date : 2024-10-18 17:10:26
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