The Overturn of Roe Could Mean the End of Fertility Medicine

The Overturn of Roe Could Mean the End of Fertility Medicine
7/13/2022 by Nairi Shirinian and Meghna Mukherjee
The end of Roe, combined with existing anti-poor fertility policies, means that women—especially poor women of color—will have even less of a say in the time and circumstances in which they decide to have a family.


Nina Osborne, who has done several rounds of IVF in hopes of fulfilling her lifelong dream of having children, goes through her IVF medications at home in Parkville, Md., on May 10, 2022. She will travel an hour and a half to a fertility clinic in northern Virginia for her next round of IVF in June. Of the embryos she already has frozen, most have genetic abnormalities. She has concerns about what will happen to those frozen embryos as Roe v. Wade hangs in the balance. (Carolyn Van Houten / The Washington Post via Getty Images)

It’s no coincidence that the world’s first IVF baby was born just five years after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. IVF, or in vitro fertilization, is often mistakenly thought to be irrelevant to abortion debates. After all, people spend tens of thousands of dollars on reproductive technologies like IVF to help them become pregnant, while the conversation surrounding abortion largely concerns unexpected and often unwanted pregnancies. But, upon a closer look, Roe not only empowered millions of women with bodily autonomy by constitutionally protecting their right to terminate a pregnancy—the decision also enabled the rapid growth of new technologies beyond IVF to assist human reproduction.

With Roe reversed, several states are poised to ban abortions; trigger laws in at least 13 U.S. states will immediately prohibit abortion without exceptions. Under many of these state laws, ‘life’ will be defined as the moment an egg is fertilized. These laws threaten those undergoing (and those performing) procedures, such as IVF or third-party gamete donation, by limiting or prohibiting the freezing or discarding of embryos—a process fundamental to successful fertility treatments. Researchers will likely face insufficient access to embryos to improve available treatments. Overturning Roe infringes upon the ability to preserve or willingly discard embryos. These practices, which are central to safe advancements in fertility medicine, could all but vanish in some places.

In fact, the overturning of Roe will dramatically limit a crucial option for many people looking to build families. Technologies such as IVF help thousands of people have children every year in the United States. Between 2018 and 2019 alone, there was an almost 4 percent increase in babies born using IVF in the U.S., signaling how integral these fertility options are to families. Because fertility processes can be arduous, risky and costly, doctors typically try to create multiple embryos from a patient’s single cycle of treatment. Fertility scientists must also be able to study embryos, which requires being able to store, freeze and discard embryos in order to make assisted reproduction safer and more effective. Without Roe, each of these processes enabling fertility care are in jeopardy in jurisdictions that do not support abortion rights.

Overturning Roe infringes upon the ability to preserve or willingly discard embryos. These practices, which are central to safe advancements in fertility medicine, could all but vanish in some places. Abortion and assisted reproductive technologies share another commonality: Women’s access has always been patterned along racial and class lines. And the end of Roe could only further entrench this. Individuals from marginalized groups have historically faced multiple barriers to fertility treatment including cost, lack of insurance coverage and discrimination by providers.

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https://msmagazine.com/2022/07/13/fertility-medicine-post-roe-women-of-color-family-inequality/