As Donald Trump brags about “being the person responsible” for overturning Roe v. Wade and the extreme abortion bans across the country, women and families nationwide are having their lives thrown into chaos and uncertainty. In Alabama, a family was forced to flee the state to continue their IVF journey because Trump and his MAGA allies are inserting themselves into the most personal decisions a family could make. This is the reality Trump would force onto women nationwide as he plots to ban abortion in all 50 states, with or without Congress.

Key Point: “IVF can be as stressful as it is exciting. However, the potential of having a successful pregnancy and our own child at the end of the process, we hoped, would make it all worth it. The decision by the Alabama Supreme Court threw our dreams up in the air… The decision and its implication – that IVF could not continue in the state of Alabama – felt like a personal affront to us. We were infuriated to have this uncertainty injected into the process three days into injecting IVF medication.”

Indiana Capitol Chronicle: Commentary | Alabama Supreme Court’s IVF ruling turned professor into a reproductive-rights refugee

[Spencer Goidel, 04/11/24]

• The day before the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos created and used for in vitro fertilization are children, my wife, Gabby, and I were greenlighted by our doctors to begin the IVF process. We live in Alabama.

• That Friday evening, Feb. 16, 2024, unaware of the ruling, Gabby started taking her stimulation medications, worth roughly US$4,000 in total. We didn’t hear about the decision until Sunday morning, Feb. 18. By then, she had taken four injections – or two doses – of each of the stimulation medications.

• IVF can be as stressful as it is exciting. However, the potential of having a successful pregnancy and our own child at the end of the process, we hoped, would make it all worth it. The decision by the Alabama Supreme Court threw our dreams up in the air.

• I study politics – I don’t practice it. I’m not involved in state or local government. I’m a scholar, not an activist or an advocate. But now one of the most intimate, personal events of our lives had been turned into a political event by the state’s highest court. As a result, I became something else, too, which I had not been before: an activist.
  
  
• Throughout the process of creating, growing and testing embryos in a lab, as many as 50% to 70% of embryos can be lost. Similarly, in the preimplantation stage of natural pregnancies, many embryos don’t survive.

• The decision and its implication – that IVF could not continue in the state of Alabama – felt like a personal affront to us. We were infuriated to have this uncertainty injected into the process three days into injecting IVF medication.

• While the decision clearly imperiled the future of IVF in Alabama, it was not clear to us whether we would be allowed to continue the process we had begun. We were left completely in the dark for the next four days. Gabby and I had no choice but to continue daily life and IVF as though nothing was happening.

• For me, that meant teaching my political participation course at Auburn University.

• I’ll never forget walking into class on Monday, Feb. 19, and telling the students about the court’s ruling and how it – maybe? – was going to jeopardize Gabby’s and my IVF process.

• Before starting IVF, Gabby and I had gone through three miscarriages together.

• IVF doesn’t always work. Approximately 55% of IVF patients under the age of 35 – Gabby is 26 – have a successful pregnancy after one egg retrieval. We couldn’t imagine the pain of telling friends and family that our attempt at having a child had once again failed. So we had agreed we were going to tell as few people as possible about starting IVF.

• Yet, here I was now, telling my entire class what we were going through and how the Alabama Supreme Court ruling could affect us.

• In an attempt to tie our personal political experience into the class topic, I remarked that this court decision was a surefire way to get people involved in politics. I had no clue at the time how prophetic my comment would be.
  
• On Wednesday, Feb. 21, the University of Alabama Birmingham’s fertility clinic paused IVF treatments. That wasn’t our clinic, but the move sent us into a total panic. Our clinic’s closure seemed inevitable – and within 24 hours it had paused IVF treatments as well.

• We didn’t know what we were going to do, but we knew we were likely leaving the state to continue IVF. I needed to tell my department chair what was going on.

• I was walking out of my department chair’s office when my phone rang. Gabby told me, “We got in, we’re going to Temple.” I ran back into my department chair’s office, told her we were going to Temple, Texas, and then rushed home.

• The thought of not completing the egg retrieval never seriously entered our minds. We were confident that we could get in with another IVF clinic somewhere, anywhere. But we’re affluent. We’re privileged. What if we weren’t so well off? We wouldn’t have wanted to give up, but we wouldn’t have been able to afford the fight.

• We spent exactly one week at my parents’ house in Texas. Thankfully, my parents live an hour and a half away from the Temple clinic. We met our new doctor, Dr. Gordon Wright Bates, and were immediately reassured. His cool expertise and confidence were calming to a stressed-out couple. The Alabama Supreme Court may have upended our lives, but we felt weirdly lucky to be in such a comfortable place.

• The egg retrieval was Wednesday morning, Feb. 28. By all indications, it went well. IVF, however, is full of uncertainties. Now we are waiting on the results from preimplantation genetic testing. After that, there’s implantation and hoping the embryo continues to grow. We’re not in the clear: IVF is a stressful process even without a state court getting in the way. But today we are in a situation more like an average couple going through IVF than we have been in the past few weeks.

• In this case, the Alabama Supreme Court ruling mobilized Gabby and other women going through the IVF process. For better or worse, the women, couples and families mobilized by this decision will likely always be more engaged because of it.

• “Oh, God,” I remarked to my dad, “we’re going to be activists now, aren’t we?”

• “So?” he asked.

• “No one likes activists,” I responded in jest. But if we’re going to have and raise the family we want, this is just the first of many decisions we’re going to make that someone’s not going to like.