Why Alabama’s ruling that embryos are children could fuel anti-abortion movement in Canada

Decision also 'chilling' for people seeking IVF, says Canada Research Chair

Natalie Stechyson · CBC News
Feb 22, 2024

A decision by the Alabama Supreme Court that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law has some reproductive rights advocates and fertility law experts in Canada concerned about a potential ripple effect.

The worry isn't necessarily that a decision like the one in Alabama, that was issued in wrongful death cases brought by couples who had frozen embryos destroyed in an accident, could happen here, experts say.

Continued: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/alabama-court-embryos-1.7121293

USA – The Anti-Abortion Movement Is Coming for Fertility Treatments

An Alabama court may have just ended IVF in the state—opening up the whole IVF process to politically-motivated legal scrutiny and penalty.

2/20/2024
by JILL FILIPOVIC

The availability of in-vitro fertilization in Alabama may now be in question after the state’s Supreme Court ruled that embryos kept in clinic freezers are considered persons under the law, and protected by the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. It’s a shocking and jarring decision that radically extends the bounds of legal personhood, tosses any claims to originalism aside, and seems primed to make a variety of fertility treatments either extremely costly for patients, or extremely legally risky for clinicians.

If you want a sense of just how overtly theocratic the opposition to abortion and IVF are, I invite you to read the dissent in the Alabama decision, which was penned by the court’s chief justice and is a really really long argument that can be basically summed up as: “God said so.” So that’s who’s leading the court in Alabama.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2024/02/20/fertility-ivf-alabama-supreme-court-anti-abortion/

USA – ‘This is our new normal’: Fertility treatment advocates are gearing up to fight abortion bans and personhood laws

RESOLVE, a major advocacy group, is launching a new campaign to bring fertility patients’ and doctors’ stories directly to lawmakers — and the public — in 2023.

Grace Panetta, Political reporter
November 14, 2022

Anti-abortion politicians and ballot initiatives lost big at the ballot box in the 2022 midterms. But fertility treatment advocates and patients are gearing up to fight against the next wave of anti-abortion legislation and restrictions on reproductive health.

RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association is gearing up for 2023 state legislative sessions with a new initiative, Fight for Families, to expand its lobbying and advocacy against strict abortion bans and proposed personhood laws that could threaten access to fertility treatments including in vitro fertilization, or IVF.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2022/11/resolve-infertility-advocates-abortion-bans-laws/

14.11.2022

Commentary

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American Society of Reproductive Medicine

National Fertility Association

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

24.09.2022

Human Life Protection Act

in-vitro fertilization

Chinese government attempts to boost birth rate with new policies

Measures include improved maternal healthcare and efforts to reduce abortions as China seeks to reverse declining population growth

Helen Davidson in Taipei, and agencies
Wed 17 Aug 2022

The Chinese government has pledged to improve pre- and post-natal services to encourage more people to have children and reiterated its intent to “discourage” abortions as it seeks to turn around a declining birth rate.

The measures announced by the country’s national health commission include a pledge to make fertility treatments more accessible. For several years authorities have flagged expanding IVF access to single women but it remains available only to married couples. A court challenge by a woman was recently struck down.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/17/chinese-government-birth-rate-policies-abortions-population

17.08.2022