Tuesday, February 27, 2024. The date had been marked on my friend's calendar for months. That day was the day she and her husband were scheduled for their last injection during the pregnancy. My friend's last embryo, a beautiful baby embryo, was to be implanted into her uterus by her medical team. If her body allows her embryo to develop and grow, she will call her baby her own, which she has been praying for for years. Even if it wasn't, it was the last shot.
Speaking of the final shot, when the Alabama Supreme Court announced its ruling that embryos, or “children outside the womb,” should be considered necessary to prepare the body to receive an embryo transfer, she I had just finished a series of intensive (and expensive!) hormone injections. Minor children for the purpose of wrongful death cases. A few days later, with less than a week until her scheduled transfer, her phone rang. On the other end of her phone, she heard her doctor telling her that her embryo transfer had been canceled and that she would now have no chance to become a mother. for how long? who knows.
It is irrelevant that this fetus, her cute little fetus, cannot grow or develop beyond the fetus without a uterus. That means it will never survive outside of the freezer it currently resides in. Unless a donor can implant it into the mother's womb, its development will be arrested in a mass of cells. Now, under Alabama's new case law, the clinic's liability is too heavy. After all, this is a pro-life nation.
This decision was very shocking to me and my family. Not only because our friends were directly affected, but also because my husband and I had dropped off our last DNA sample at the hospital the day before clinics across the state closed their IVF procedures. . Please email the lab that will develop genetic probes for our own IVF procedures.
I was born with a rare genetic mutation that causes severe muscle weakness. Although this is degenerative, it is not fatal. Certainly not something I want to pass on to my children. That's why I learned that scientists could virtually eliminate the risk of this rare mutation by removing my eggs, fertilizing them with my husband's sperm, developing the embryos outside of my womb, and biopsiing and testing them. When that happened, I felt relieved.
My mutation is not the only thing that this process prevents. PGT-A and PGT-M tests can be used for all types of genetic abnormalities, including Down syndrome, Turner syndrome, spinal muscular atrophy, Tay-Sachs disease, cystic fibrosis, and Fragile X. syndrome, Huntington's disease, and even some hereditary cancers. This is truly game-changing science in the medical industry and science that is changing the lives of families across Alabama.
But under new case law in Alabama, my doctors are not willing to allow our baby to inherit the disease for fear of being sued, or worse, charged with murder. They won't help you prevent it. In fact, I am writing this opinion piece under an anonymous byline for fear that even acknowledging this process could affect me and my family, or my friends and their families. .
You know, what the Alabama Supreme Court did is open the door to an incredibly slippery slope of legal debate and prove a point about how pro-life we ​​can be. We did it in a state that was itching to do so. The state is already seeking to criminalize other aspects of reproductive health.
Because if you can be prosecuted for the wrongful death of a fetus, why can't you be criminally prosecuted for the murder of a fetus? Who will care for the fetus if the parents are unable or after the parents are gone? Does a miscarriage (whether due to infertility treatment or through natural conception) trigger a DHR investigation of the parents' other children in the same way as the death of a child? Will a parent lose custody of their child due to infertility treatment? Will we continue to point out our families' most painful experiences, trying to shift blame and add salt to an already open wound?
In fact, this decision is currently having a major impact on families across the state. We've thoroughly defeated the “the decision is between the woman and her doctor” argument, and I'm trying to revive this debate in order to thoroughly defeat it again. is. These are personal decisions. Those are family decisions. And as scary as it is to admit, the Alabama Legislature is the only one who can fix it, and they owe it to every little unborn child to do so. fast.
