As someone trying to have a baby, you probably think laws on abortion have absolutely nothing to do with you. In fact, whether you consider yourself pro-life, pro-choice, or no-strong-opinion, you may feel some anger at those who seek to terminate pregnancies.
After all, you're trying your darndest to have a baby. It's hard to relate to those who want to end a pregnancy.
And yet, as an infertility patient, you need to care about abortion legislation, because it has the potential to keep you from bringing life into this world.
Crazy, right?
Keiko Zoll, who blogs at Hannah Wept, Sarah Laughed (and is perhaps best known for her inspirational and tear-producing video What IF?), has written an impassioned plea to the fertility community to take notice and take action on abortion legislation and "life begins at conception" legislation.
Her post, which you can (must!) read here, gave me chills, brought tears to my eyes, and made me angry. So angry.
I've known for a while now that life-begins-at-conception legislation can be a problem for fertility patients. How? Because when you say life begins at conception, those beloved embryos who just are not suitable for transfer become "humans".
Even if they are completely incapable of becoming a baby, throwing them away becomes murder. It's only a short leap from there to saying that accidental destruction of an embryo would be unintentional homicide.
This isn't the part of her blog post that really got to me, though. It was this bit:
"Because if we don't, then we might just end up with legislation that seeks to investigate all miscarriages, cuz yanno, to see if they were induced. Because if they were, it would be a criminal offense."
She then goes onto quote some actual legislation that would have required unexplained miscarriages to be investigated... ! The majority of miscarriages are, by the way, unexplained.
Let me say this a different way -- having a miscarriage would make you a potential murder suspect.
Thankfully, this legislation was never passed, thanks to the grassroots work of bloggers, activists, and general media uproar. Still, you can see how dangerous these laws can be for fertility patients.
You can also see why your voice, email, and phone call to legislators are important. Your voice does make a difference. Legislators enjoy passing laws, but they enjoy being legislators even more. They care about losing voter support.
Please go read Keiko's well-researched blog post for more details. Then, I encourage you to get mad and get involved. Your ability to have even a chance at IVF depends on it.
As for me, I need to go have some tea and calm down. I can't get over the idea that someone would see me as a potential murder suspect for having had three miscarriages.
Thoughts? Please share in the comments. I want to hear from you!
Thank you for writing this blog. Thanks to Keiko Zoll for her fantastic writing.
I would like to reinforce what you have said about the importance of contacting your legislator. I’d like to provide a resource on how to do that. http://www.fertilityhealthadvocatesne.org provides step-by-step instructions on how to find your legislator and what information needs to be included when you contact them. This information helps patients communicate with their legislators in an extremely effective manner.
Good luck to us all!
Davina
This blog makes me MAD…but not the way Ms. Gurevich is “mad.” What makes me mad is that you and others like you exert this sheer brutal power over the young embryos. Depending on how you “feel” you provide one embryo with the opportunity to live…the other to a never-ending cryo-frozen existence or worse, down the drain. Nevermind that that the reality of the embryo…human life at its earliest stage…is unchanged…what changes is how you FEEL about that living embryo. You take it upon yourself to assert who gets “transferred” and who does not.
And you have the audacity to crulely twist “abortion legislation” to fit your own “feelings?” This makes me mad. Also, I get mad at the IVF industry…it spends far too little time trying to figure out what is wrong with us and way too much on marketing and blogspin ignoring the physical problems and just trying to get a paying customer pregnant (again, FAR too little effort on bringing our babies to term as healthy children.) What makes me mad is the ignorance and effort on this and other sites that distort and deceive. Does anyone reading this REALLY think there is one iota of a chance that the government will investigate miscarriages? Really? Seriously?
Being used by irrational bloggers like Ms. Geurvich in complicity with an industry focused on MONEY makes ME mad.
Obviously, we all have different opinions on when life starts, including how embryos are considered.
However, I would like to say that I have no interest in “funding” fertility clinics, nor no way to gain by supporting them.
I advocate for fertility patients (and all people who may one day want to have a baby) as a fertility patient myself, not as a doctor or fertility clinic owner.
My goal is simply to support fertility challenged people, let them know what could possibly affect their lives (like legislation), and let them decide how to feel and what to do.
But “crulely twist” information? No reason do so.
Really, we have different “opinions” about when “life starts?” Science and medicine tells us unequivocally that life begins the instant sperm meets ovum. At what point we attach protection and dignity to this living, developing human embryo–human life at the embryonic stage of development–THAT is opinion.
You may not “fund” fertility clinics, but you fail to effectively advocate for the infertile by not addressing the causes of infertility.
Open your mind.
I absolutely address the causes of infertility on this site. In this particular post? No. But elsewhere? Absolutely.
I’m not sure if you’re trying to imply that IVF can always be avoided if the causes are treated? If so, actually, that isn’t true.
There are some groups that insist IVF is avoidable, but that’s an agenda, not a medical reality. Thankfully, most couples will not need IVF. But for those that do, for some, that is their only hope for pregnancy.
Open YOUR mind, Charlene. “Life” may begin at conception, but that isn’t a human being. The law of this country has established that an embryo is not a human being. And you obviously know very, very little about biology and IVF. Many embryos aren’t transferred because they aren’t healthy enough to become human beings.
And why, exactly, do YOU think you have “sheer brutal power” over women? Mind your own business. A woman’s body is hers to do with as she sees fit. Women are more than breeding machines. Since when do you “have the audacity to crulely (actually spelled cruelly) twist “abortion legislation” to fit your own “feelings?” There are many, many reasons for abortion – from poverty (thank a Republican for that) to illness to disease and fear. I’ll say it again – mind your own business. You have enough on your plate without butting into other’s lives.
“Does anyone reading this REALLY think there is one iota of a chance that the government will investigate miscarriages? Really? Seriously?”
Like I’m going to sit around and give them a chance by letting some law like that come about. Not to mention what a waste of time and effort it is to legislate something like this. It’s so surprising that you can attribute a cruel and elaborate conspiracy plot to this, that or another blog, but you don’t think that the government is capable of such an enterprise? Now that’s what’s really mad…
Charlene: It’s one thing to respectfully disagree with what is written, but its another to twist, distort and imply information that is not stated or discussed. Ms. Gurevich is one of the most impartial, accurate and fully nuanced sources of information for the infertility patient community, which is why she has gained respect from so many and has such a large loyal following. Honest debate and discussion does not equate to the type of infertility bashing you have displayed.
This is a great example of the wide applications and power any legislation can have if not worded carefully.
Charlene, I think you may have misunderstood the purpose of this site. The goal of the post was to help those with infertility understand that legislation about abortion can also can have implications on them. I’m not sure if you need this so spelled out, but you may have gone to the wrong site by mistake…i’d check your browser or search engine.
Rachel, can you please update your bio? It states that you had three miscarriages and you are hoping for that “third”child, but somehow I get the feeling that you have had IVF treatments that worked, is this true? If so, please let us know what you had done and how it worked for you….this kind of information, especially on a fertility bloggers site, is imperative.
Thanks
Dolly,
Thank you for the reminder! I have updated my bio. I have not used IVF, but I did use fertility drugs (injectables). I had twins, and they just turned a year old last month.
This is just awful, I can’t believe that anyone would hold a pregnant mum responsible for having a miscarriage – there certianly has to be some level of sensiblity involved – surely?
Rachel,
Not because the arguments they put forth, but because of the manner in which they do it – much like a barking dog who sits on a strangers porch and proclaims it to be their own. I cannot imagine for even half a second, Charlene has ever experienced infertility because of her sheer lack of understanding of how the human body works, how conception happens and follows through. I also cannot imagine she’s actually a subscriber to your blog posts because if she was, she’d know that you do present a lot of very unbiased information as an advocate for infertility patients.
Thank you again for another informative article. I have had a lot of the same concerns about this bit of legislation, both in Mississippi and other states where Personhood USA is trying to get legislation introduced.
People like Charlene make my head hurt
As someone who suffered from the dx of recurrent miscarriages, I can only imagine the stigma that would have been assigned to me (surely I *must* be doing something wrong to have had FOUR, right?) Turns out I had a large uterine septum that was preventing a pregnancy from ’sticking’. If Personhood USA has their way, people like myself, like yourself who have suffered so much loss would suffer even more (and yes, politicians in GA tried to do something similar that would require all miscarriages to be investigated).
Further implications I can see from this legislation would be, if someone does have embryos to transfer, that the government could legislate if their mother was even fit to have them transferred (how likely is she to actually stay pregnant – is she the best candidate to bring them to full, independent life?) What about a woman who has a premature baby – is she no longer qualified to carry a baby after that? Or will she be investigated and have to report to some governmental agency on her pregnancy progress in subsequent pregnancies to make sure she’s not going to have the next one early too?
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This is a mighty slippery slope. As much as Personhood USA and other advocates of the personhood movement want to say that these are trivial arguments and hypothetical in nature, I can argue that if we can think of them now, someone is surely to think of them if it IS passed (and worse) and push for further legislation.
For what it’s worth, I went on to have a (surprise) baby several years after having the septum surgically removed. Before that, however, we adopted our first daughter. My husband is also adopted, as well as a host of cousins of mine. I am extremely pro-life, and even I can see this personhood movement is extreme!