Save IVF
Healthcare Workers for Reproductive Freedom, a grassroots coalition, is collecting signatures from medical professionals in response to the recent Alabama Supreme Court decision restricting IVF. Please fill out the form HERE to add your name to the statement. Over 2,000 healthcare workers signed on in the first few days!
Families in the Crossfire: Statement on the Alabama Supreme Court’s Intrusion into IVF Rights
We are medical professionals from across the United States and we are gravely concerned for our patients’ rights and safety. With the fall of Roe v. Wade, our patients are no longer protected from government intrusion into their most private moments.
For the past 20 months, we have seen countless patients and families suffer as necessary healthcare is delayed or denied. We have had to tell our patients “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you”– knowing that it is our duty to do so. We’ve voiced our concerns on local and national stages. We have listened to the profound voices of our patients as we passed citizen-initiated constitutional amendments that protect reproductive healthcare in several states, and began this process in many others.
We are dismayed, however, by our government’s relentless efforts to dive head first into our exam rooms–inserting itself as an ominous regulator in a world where it has no understanding.
The most recent example of this is the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that grants a human embryo –a few cells– the same legal protections as a child. This ruling is an attempt to set a legal precedent of “fetal personhood”–in other words, that a fertilized egg has equivalent rights to a human being, and anything that harms the resultant embryo is equivalent to murder. Establishing this precedent will not only lead to the end of abortion access entirely, but it will make in vitro fertilization (IVF) an impossibility and could even deem some contraceptive options illegal.
The path to building a family is not always straightforward. Many couples and individuals face the silent struggle of infertility and for many, IVF provides a chance to have a biological child. IVF is grueling–it requires months to years and tens of thousands of dollars to pursue. Despite the strenuous journey, anyone who has conceived a child through IVF will likely share that it is nothing short of a miracle. Unfortunately, in Alabama, many peoples’ hopes for such a miracle may have been destroyed by their Supreme Court.
Though the Alabama legislature has since passed a bill shielding IVF clinics and providers from criminal or civil liability, this ruling underscores the fundamental problem: government interference into patient care is disastrous for patients. Yet political decisions continue to be made about personal medical issues, at the expense of human health and dignity.
As medical professionals dedicated to the well-being of our patients, we are deeply troubled by this erosion of reproductive rights and government interference into the sacred provider-patient relationship. Our collective plea to policymakers is to safeguard the autonomy of individuals in making their healthcare choices and protect access to reproductive healthcare, like IVF, which offer hope and fulfillment to countless families grappling with infertility.
