Why many IVF patients worry about the antiabortion movement

Perspective by Julianna Goldman
July 29, 2023

Whenever anyone asks whether I’m done having children, my answer is: “Yes, but … .” That’s because, although my husband and I have two young children, we also have six potential babies. The latter are embryos created years ago through in vitro fertilization and now frozen in liquid nitrogen in a Maryland lab.

While I mostly feel like our family is complete, I haven’t been able to bring myself to decide what to do with those frozen bundles of our DNA. The decision has become even more fraught since last year when the Supreme Court stripped away the federal right to an abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. It’s unclear how Dobbs could affect autonomy over the estimated 1.5 million frozen embryos nationwide, but it’s a worry.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/07/29/dobbs-abortion-ivf-embryos-impact/


US anti-abortion extremists are already waging war on IVF

Republicans have made it very clear that they aren’t going to stop at abortion: they’re coming for birth control and fertility treatments

Arwa Mahdawi
Sat 24 Sep 2022

Going through fertility treatment isn’t fun at the best of times: it’s expensive, invasive and emotionally exhausting. Ever since Roe v Wade was overturned earlier this year, however, getting fertility treatments in the US has become exponentially more stressful; the end of Roe triggered a spate of new personhood bills in Republican states which define a fertilized egg or embryo as a legal human entity. If you know anything about in vitro fertilization (IVF), which I’m not sure any of the men drafting these personhood bills do, you’ll immediately know that makes IVF hugely complex. Numerous embryos are usually created during the IVF process as not all will be genetically viable. Unviable embryos, along with embryos that aren’t donated or frozen for later use, will be disposed. If these collections of cells are considered people then, according to the personhood laws, you’ve committed a crime by disposing of them.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/24/republicans-ivf-abortion-week-in-patriarchy


USA – Why Anti-Choice People Are Okay with IVF

Why Anti-Choice People Are Okay with IVF
If you dislike abortion because you believe every embryo is a person, you should hate IVF, which results in the destruction of millions of embryos.

By Jennifer Wright
Jun 14, 2019

Like a lot of women in America, I have had some fertility challenges.

At times, this has made me very sad and frustrated because I would love to have a child. But it has not made me think that we should force other women to have babies they don’t want so I can adopt them, because, while voluntarily putting a baby up for adoption is an act of enormous kindness, I do not regard women as walking wombs who should pop out infants for my convenience.

Continued: https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/politics/a27888471/why-anti-choice-people-against-abortion-are-okay-with-ivf/


Latin America’s Rights Riddle

Latin America’s Rights Riddle
Why the region says yes to same-sex marriage and no to abortion.

By Omar G. Encarnación
August 27, 2018

In Latin America, progressive politics present something of a mystery: As LGBT rights have flourished, women’s reproductive rights have floundered. Earlier this month, for example, a bill to legalize abortion in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy was defeated in the Argentine Senate. This is the same body that in 2010 made Argentina the first Latin American country to legalize same-sex marriage with identical rights to heterosexual marriage. And since that historic milestone, Argentina has enacted one of the most liberal laws on gender identity to be found anywhere in the world. Its code allows people to change the gender listed on their legal documents without a diagnosis of gender dysphoria or permission from a judge, as is required in most countries. The country has also granted same-sex couples reproductive rights, such as access to in vitro fertilization under the national health plan, and has banned programs that aim to “cure” same-sex attraction.

Continued: https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/27/latin-americas-rights-riddle/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_todayworld


U.S. Study: Catholic Hospitals ‘Dump’ Abortion Patients, Often Refuse Referrals

Aug 3, 2016, 4:50pm, by Nicole Knight Shine

Respondents reported that they received mixed messages from hospital authorities when the facility's moral teachings were pitted against its financial interests. For example, Catholic doctrine prohibits handling eggs and sperm for in-vitro fertilization procedures, but a respondent said a Catholic hospital system skirted the ban by opening an off-site fertility clinic. (Photo: Shutterstock)

"What doctors told us is sometimes for abortion ... there was a sense of, 'You're on your own,'" said Dr. Debra B. Stulberg, assistant professor of family medicine at the University of Chicago.

The patient learned she had brain cancer in her first trimester of pregnancy. She needed chemotherapy and abortion care.“I’ve got a woman whose life is threatened by brain cancer,” her doctor, an OB-GYN at a Catholic hospital, told authorities there. “I need to do a termination.” Catholic hospitals follow religious directives that generally bar certain types of health care, including abortions, except when the patient is in imminent danger.

The hospital refused the treatment, telling the OB-GYN to refer his patient elsewhere.

“They said, ‘Go take her to another hospital. Take her to another place. Those places are available to you. We don’t have to do it here…’,” the OB-GYN explained.

The case is among many contained in a new paper, “Referrals for Services Prohibited in Catholic Health Care Facilities,” which will be published in the September issue of Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health. The study explores whether Catholic hospitals make timely referrals, provide complete and accurate health-care information, and supply emergency treatment when needed.

And it comes as Catholic facilities exert more and more control over U.S. health care, now accounting for one in six hospital beds nationwide, according to recent figures from the advocacy group MergerWatch.

“Until now, there hasn’t been a study asking about referral patterns in Catholic hospitals,” lead author, Dr. Debra B. Stulberg, assistant professor of family medicine at the University of Chicago, said in a phone interview with Rewire. “We set out to ask OB-GYNs how the institution where they worked affected the care they provide.”

In 2011 and 2012, Stulberg and her co-authors conducted in-depth interviews with 27 OB-GYNs who were working or had worked in Catholic hospitals.

The OB-GYNs came from a diversity of faiths and hailed from all parts of the country; 17 were female, ten were male. And while the qualitative nature of the survey means the responses cannot be generalized across Catholic hospitals nationwide, the survey reveals a referral process plagued by reports of inconsistencies and treatment delays.

Survey respondents described cases where they felt that referring a patient to an outside provider put the patient’s health at risk.

One OB-GYN found it “nearly impossible” to treat heavy vaginal bleeding because of the hospital’s ban on hormonal contraceptives.

“Say you have…a 45-year-old who comes in [at three in the morning] with heavy bleeding and irregular periods. The most common approach to stopping her bleeding is to give her high-dose birth control pills for a short period of time. So, that became very difficult…’cause they didn’t have them in stock. I won’t say it’s impossible to get them, because like the head pharmacist knows where there’s three secret packs, and if you happen to manage to find the head pharmacist at [that hour], you can. But it’s nearly impossible to get birth control pills to treat heavy bleeding.”

OB-GYNs described broad inconsistencies in how hospitals handled referrals, with some hospital administrators and ethicists encouraging or tolerating referrals, and others actively discouraging referrals. Sometimes doctors kept referrals hidden. Respondents reported that patients needing abortion care were given less assistance with a referral than those requesting other prohibited services.

In one instance, a secretary tried to block an abortion care referral.

“What doctors told us is sometimes for abortion … there was a sense of, ‘You’re on your own,'” Stulberg told Rewire. She said the disparities in referrals can delay medical treatment and reinforce abortion stigma.

By referring patients for abortions rather than allowing the doctors to administer the prohibited care, some respondents felt the hospital “dumped” or “punted” the patients.

“It tells women that this care is not standard. It’s something we do on the side, under the table,” Stulberg said. “Imagining myself in those patient’s shoes, I might feel really abandoned by my doctor.”

Respondents reported that they received mixed messages from hospital authorities when the facility’s moral teachings were pitted against its financial interests.

For example, Catholic doctrine prohibits handling eggs and sperm for in-vitro fertilization procedures, but a respondent said a Catholic hospital system skirted the ban by opening an off-site fertility clinic.

As the OB-GYN explained, “Now, they’re getting a little crafty with how they get around it, and they go off-campus [to provide such services]. So we actually do now have…an infertility specialist, who is starting up an in vitro fertilization clinic off-campus…. We had somewhere to send them anyway before—it was just out of the system—but now the system wants the business.”

The authors call on policymakers to require Catholic hospitals that refuse to offer care to refer patients to providers and to inform patients beforehand about the limits on treatment at religiously run facilities.

“Having consistent procedures and help to access abortion will reduce the chance that the patient will be given the run around and have her care delayed,” study co-author Lori R. Freedman, assistant professor in the departments of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at University of California-San Francisco, told Rewire in a phone interview.

The recommendations are in keeping with ethical guidelines from the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which advises health-care providers with religious objections to abortion care to notify patients beforehand and to refer them to abortion care providers.

The study builds on research published in Contraception by a team that included Freedman and Stulberg. They found that Catholic hospitals’ ban on tubal ligations caused unnecessary second surgeries and erected barriers to care for patients with low incomes.

“You really want women to find safe and compassionate providers as soon as possible,” Freedman told Rewire. “Delays…are not good for women.”

Source: Rewire