Alabama’s IVF Patients Are Stuck in Embryo Purgatory

They’re looking for answers and running out of options.

 “It Broke My Heart”: The Brutal Effect of Alabama’s Supreme Court Ruling on IVF Patients

A former IVF clinic worker in Alabama, who successfully had a baby through the process, discusses the unprecedented ruling.

Infertility and IVF Access in the United States

Infertility impacts millions of people in the United States. Nevertheless, limited information, restrictive laws and policies, stigma, high cost, and other barriers put infertility care, including in vitro fertilization (IVF), out of reach for many, especially people from marginalized communities. Well-documented disparities in access to infertility care reveal that people of color, low income people, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ communities receive treatment at disproportionately low rates.

Alabama Ruled Frozen Embryos Are Children — Now What?

The judges got it wrong on the law, but they also got it wrong on the science. They went out on a limb telling Alabama IVF doctors how they could practice more safely and didn’t get it right. They claimed that multiple embryos are transferred all the time. That shouldn’t happen; single embryo transfer is the standard. They argue that countries like Australia and New Zealand only fertilize one egg at a time. That’s also not correct.

Alabama Thinks It Has Solved Its IVF Crisis. Not Quite

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed a bill on Wednesday designed to restore IVF access following the state Supreme Court’s disastrous decision last month holding that embryos are legally “children.” Republican legislators rushed the measure through in the face of a nationwide outcry over the sudden halt in fertility services caused by the court’s shocking ruling. It is unclear, however, whether the new law will solve the problem the court created—or whether the court, which seems committed to embryonic personhood under the Alabama Constitution, will even uphold the measure in the first place.

Alabama’s IVF Mess

I mean, it’s equivalent to asking a person in the middle of chemotherapy treatment to travel to another state and continue their care with a completely different set of physicians and nurses and support staff midway through treatment.

Alabama’s IVF Ruling Is a Dire Warning to Other States

The state's embrace of fetal personhood has had terrible, if unintended, consequences that will kill many families' dreams of having children.

Doctors shocked and angry as Alabama ruling throws IVF care into turmoil

Declaration that IVF embryos are ‘extrauterine children’ means ‘literally criminalizing standard medical care’, physicians say

John Oliver Nails the Fatal Flaw in Alabama’s IVF Ban

“There are politicians currently desperately trying to distance themselves from extreme policies that they have enabled,” Oliver said. “You can say we’re not trying to ban or burn books, but that’s what you’re doing. You can say we just want more kids but you’re making life incredibly hard for people, including those who desperately want them.”

‘My embryos aren’t safe here’: US patients struggling with infertility scramble after Alabama IVF ruling

For many people struggling with infertility, uncertainty and powerlessness are familiar agonies. But now, in addition to being at the mercy of biological and medical forces, they feel they’re also being buffeted by politicians, jurists and rightwing activists determined to embed their belief that life begins when a sperm fertilizes an egg into every aspect of American life.