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After IVF gave birth to two healthy boys, Crystal Rush and her husband faced a very difficult decision. What should she do with her three remaining embryos, which could one day have more children?
As Catholics, Ms. Rush and her husband have always believed in the sanctity of life and did not want to just destroy the fetus they had worked so hard to create with the help of doctors, fertility drugs and invasive procedures. did.
But they already had two sons, and the idea of having as many as five children was overwhelming.
They prayed about their decision. I consulted a therapist. I talked to my family. Finally, they decided it was their duty to give those embryos a chance to live and had them implanted in her womb.
None grew.
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“I believed that whether we had any more children was in God’s hands,” said Rush, 35, who lives in St. Louis. “We loved unborn children very much because they were a symbol of our hope to expand our family and have a baby. But we never thought of them as actual children. I’m telling you, don’t get me wrong, I mourned my unborn child who didn’t,” but it felt like a “different” loss than my miscarriage. ”
The distinction drawn by Dr. Rush between an embryo and a child does not exist, the Alabama Supreme Court recently said, ruling that frozen embryos are “extrauterine children.”
But it’s a distinction that could help change the trajectory of the presidential election, and a powerful new way to engage independent and conservative-leaning voters that could sway President Joe Biden’s campaign. It suddenly gave Democrats what they expected as an argument. The Feb. 16 ruling shocked the world, with reproductive rights advocates reading the decision in horror. The court’s decision reveals their worst fears.
Voter interests drive political action
Former President Donald Trump has criticized the Alabama decision, but experts say it was his pick for the Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade and laid the groundwork for the change. are doing.
Now, Democratic officials are using the new anger to attack Biden and access to reproductive health care, including IVF, to the largest recipients of IVF treatment, wealthy white conservatives or independent women. He hopes to persuade them to support his efforts to protect the country.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) announced Tuesday that she plans to seek unanimous consent from her colleagues on Wednesday for a bill that would protect IVF rights across the country. Mr Duckworth, who has two children undergoing IVF, has long argued that any decision to overturn Mr Lowe’s decision would impact IVF families. She argues that Republicans are trying to keep both sides of the aisle by claiming to support families while simultaneously attacking reproductive rights.
Also on Tuesday, the Florida Legislature delayed a bill that would criminalize harm to a “fetus” over concerns that the law would also apply to in vitro fertilization. When Roe was the law of the land, such “personality” laws were illegal. Personality law attempts to define life as beginning at the moment of conception, but some interpret it to apply only to conceptions that occur in the womb rather than in a laboratory.
The 2022 midterm elections saw an unusually large turnout of voters, especially among young women, which experts say helped thwart what had been expected to be a significant Republican victory. Additionally, a series of special elections and ballot initiatives across the country have seen anti-abortion bills defeated and candidates favoring stricter restrictions.
Experts say the Alabama IVF ruling could make IVF more common, especially among voters who are likely to support Republican presidential candidates who campaign on family values. This could lead to even more voter participation, he said.
“What this means, the concept that unborn children have rights, is very different from someone who thinks, ‘I can’t be a parent anymore.’ It’s about the ability to be,” said Shana Ghadarian, a political psychologist at Syracuse University who studies how access to reproductive rights motivates voters. People, it’s going to become even more unpopular. ”
Family-oriented Christians have mixed opinions about IVF
The Alabama decision ignited a long-simmering debate about the morality of IVF.
Christian opposition to abortion has been a driving force in the debate over reproductive rights. Abortion opponents say life begins at conception and that even a handful of cells deserve the same legal protections as humans. Some conservative states have passed laws stating that life begins at conception, and Alabama courts relied heavily on Christian beliefs and the Bible to make their case. The court called these embryos “fetuses kept alive in cryogenic nurseries.”
In particular, some religions oppose the modern process of removing and fertilizing multiple eggs, screening the mass of cells for genetic problems and overall viability, and discarding weaker options. They also object to doctors implanting multiple embryos, monitoring which ones are developing the best, and removing others in a process known as “selective reduction.”
The Catholic Church opposes most forms of in vitro fertilization, especially selective fetal reduction, but it also opposes any form of in vitro fertilization that violates the marriage contract, such as when a doctor fertilizes an egg with sperm or when a donor’s eggs or sperm are used. They are also against the process.
John Haas, director of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, said in 1998, “Children are the great gift of marriage, so it is good to try to overcome the obstacles that prevent us from conceiving and bearing children.” It is written in a famous explanation. Regarding the church’s position. “But children are not created by technology or industry. They are to be born out of a collaboration with God and an act of love between husband and wife.”
Currently, about 2% of babies born each year in the United States are conceived through in vitro fertilization, and experts say there may be as many as 1 million frozen embryos in storage nationwide. In Alabama, the largest IVF provider suspended operations following a court decision, and some embryo storage companies said they would no longer move embryos in or out of the state.
Politics has made IVF an election issue.
Kristin Dillen-Snyder, 43, underwent IVF while living in Alabama since 2015. Ms. Dillen-Snyder, who was based in Alabama due to her husband’s military service, transferred her three embryos. Her one pregnancy failed, one pregnancy ended in miscarriage, and the third gave birth to daughter Grace, who is now 6 years old.
Dillen-Snyder, who was raised Catholic, said she is increasingly aware that some politicians say they support family values but don’t actually live up to their words. Ta. Dillen-Snyder, who works as an IVF coach for other families going through the process, said she recently received a text message from a client who was wondering who to vote for in the state’s Republican primary. she said. Nikki Haley, a moderate on many issues, initially said she would support it. President Trump made the ruling possible through the court’s ruling or the appointment of conservative Supreme Court justices who criticized it but overturned Roe.
Dillen-Snyder said she sees many “cafeteria Catholic” families who reject the church’s opposition to IVF and instead choose which parts of their faith to protect. She said many new IVF families were largely unaware of the political implications of Roe’s decision. She says they don’t usually focus on politics because their top priority is having children.
But Alabama’s decision “pulled back the curtain” and forced IVF families to consider the impact of the election, she said.
“I’m not shouting from the rooftops that if you’re in a red state, move your embryos. But what I’m saying is that politicians’ words don’t matter, their actions do. That’s the thing,” Dillen-Snyder said. “This will definitely encourage more people to participate in elections.”
The decision forces Republicans to strike a political balance.
Katie Faust hopes Alabama’s decision will encourage more people to see IVF embryos as human lives, not just mechanical steps in the reproductive process. Faust, founder and president of the Seattle-based right-to-life group Them Before Us, said the current IVF community is rushing to extract embryos to help people give birth, regardless of the moral cost. He said he believes they were created and destroyed too soon.
“The infertility industry is built on violating children’s rights,” Faust said. “If clinics have to consider these IVF babies to be real human children, they must routinely create more children than can be implanted and subject the embryos to genetic screening, sex selection, and fitness testing. The process for “grading” must be appropriate. “Yes, this will change the way patients and doctors approach IVF in the future. This is a long-awaited change.”
Faust said Republicans can’t call themselves “pro-life” unless they also oppose what she calls a “great fertility” approach to embryos created through in vitro fertilization, adding, “Of course all children It’s a blessing. Some people die in the process, some are donated to research, and some don’t make it out of the freezer.”
Ghadarian, the Syracuse professor, said the Alabama ruling puts Republicans in a tough spot. If we want to help families, we need to be divided on IVF rulings so as not to offend conservative voters who support IVF, she said.
“The ruling on IVF is a real issue for 2024 that Republicans would rather not see come up.”,” she said.
Immediately after the Alabama decision, National Republican Senatorial Committee Executive Director Jason Thielman sent a memo to Senate candidates urging them to “clearly and concisely reject government efforts” to restrict IVF. Thielman noted that about 78% of people who identify as pro-life, 83% of evangelical Christians and 86% of women support some form of in vitro fertilization.
More than 100 House Republicans have signed on to support the Conception Life Support Act of 2023, which includes language that mirrors an Alabama court ruling.
Reproductive rights experts say personality laws could ultimately lead to restrictions on some types of contraception and could lead to people being criminally charged for not living a healthy lifestyle during pregnancy. It states that there is.
I no longer vote along party lines.
In Alabama, Marilyn Lands, 65, a Democrat running in a special election for the state House of Representatives, said her conversations with voters have changed dramatically since the court ruling.
“The last few days have given me a sense that we have gone too far,” said Lands, who has made abortion access, along with her Christian faith, a key part of her campaign. “Especially what we hear on voters’ doorsteps is, ‘I always vote Republican, but this time I’m going to really think about who’s actually running.'”
This will be Lands’ second attempt at the Alabama House. She narrowly lost in 2022. Abortion access and reproductive rights are now top priorities for many voters, unlike two years ago, she said.
“I feel like we’ve unleashed something. I think people are starting to see past the rhetoric and realize that we’re really talking about freedom here,” Lands said. “That’s the heart of this campaign. We’re starting to see a movement where people are voting more thoughtfully. They’re starting to make some connections.”
In St. Louis, Rush said her social media feed is filled with IVF mothers asking to keep politics out of their families.. She shared and thanked the following words that went viral on social media: “No one cares more about their fetus than an IVF patient. No one understands that an embryo is not a child like an IVF patient.”
Rush believes that heartbreaking decisions like the one her family faced can be made between IVF patients and doctors without politicians “sticking their noses” into a private space already filled with hope, heartbreak, and moral questions. He said he hopes he will remain in the country.
“I can’t say for sure whether this will affect how I vote, but I can say that I wouldn’t be surprised if I ended up voting for a politician who supported IVF rights.” Rush said he thinks he’s right. – He is leaning. “I don’t know if I could vote for a politician who would pass a law that would make IVF more difficult for people trying to get pregnant.”
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