‘Gut punch after gut punch’: In Alabama, IVF patients speak out
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra spoke to patients and providers about the chaos unleashed by a recent state court decision. Read more at 19th News
IVF
Alabama justice’s ties with far-right Christian movement raise concern
Tom Parker, a Republican who joined the court in 2005, wrote a concurring opinion that quoted at length from sources such as the Book of Genesis, the Ten Commandments and Christian thinkers of centuries ago, such as Thomas Aquinas. But comments he has made in other media have raised questions about his seeming espousal of … Read more
What Alabama’s IVF ruling reveals about the ascendant Christian nationalist movement
“He framed it entirely assuming that the state of Alabama is a theocracy, and that that is a legitimate way of evaluating laws and policies,” said Julie Ingersoll, a University of North Florida professor who studies religion and culture. “It looks like he decided to just dismiss the history of first amendment religious freedom jurisprudence … Read more
Republicans block bill that would protect IVF
‘A Quandary’: Republicans Hesitant To Back Federal Protections For IVF On the one hand, Republicans maintain that they support the continued use of IVF, calling it both pro-family and pro-life. But on the other hand, many in the GOP agree with the central premise of the ruling that found that frozen embryos are children with … Read more
Beyond shock and awe: Inside Trump’s potential second-term agenda
“We cannot ballot initiative our way out of this fundamental crisis of rights,” said Deirdre Schifeling, chief political and advocacy officer for the American Civil Liberties Union, one of many groups bracing for Trump and a Republican Congress to attempt to override state abortion protections. “I have no doubt that they would try to impose … Read more
Nevada abortion-rights group officially kicks off 2024 ballot measure effort — with a focus on IVF concerns
Nevada is now the latest state where abortion-rights groups have launched signature-collecting efforts to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. In the 20 months since that ruling, abortion-rights advocates have won every race in which the issue has appeared directly on the ballot. Read more … Read more
Speaker Johnson Says He Supports IVF. His Past Might Imply Otherwise.
Johnson’s name appears smack-dab in the middle of a list of 125 House Republicans co-sponsoring the Life at Conception Act, which was introduced in January 2023 as an anti-abortion bill after failing to pass earlier sessions of Congress. The bill’s language does not include any exceptions for IVF. Read more at HuffPost
Alabama’s IVF warning to the country
Let’s be clear. This decision and its very obvious fallout are a victory for an extremist wing of the anti-abortion movement I’ve been covering for the last two years. These particular activists believe in the radical idea of “fetal personhood,” meaning they want to endow fetuses (and embryos) with full human rights and legal protection. … Read more
The Pro-life Movement’s Not-So-Secret Plan for Trump
The question people should be asking is whether Trump will give free rein to the anti-abortion advisers in his orbit, Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the UC Davis School of Law, told me. The big thing those advisers are pushing for is the reinterpretation and enforcement of the Comstock Act. As I wrote in … Read more
Fallout from the Alabama IVF decision – news round-up
‘My embryos aren’t safe here’: US patients struggling with infertility scramble after Alabama IVF ruling Alabama has long been a laboratory for fetal personhood measures. Between 1973 and 2022, when the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, Alabama law enforcement criminalized nearly 700 people for allegedly endangering “unborn life” – a record number of … Read more