Regarding Ramesh Ponnuru’s Oct. 7 op-ed, “The (very) cold war on IVF”:
By Letters to the Editor
After three rounds of IVF, we had a viable embryo, and six months later, we were matched with a gestational carrier. My grief therapist told me to celebrate, but I was too worried to be joyful. And then, as if I’d manifested my own nightmare, our daughter Avellina was born with a heart condition and died two hours after she arrived in the world.
It is crucial for Americans to cast a vote in this upcoming election for the presidential candidates who are most likely to keep family planning decisions where they belong: in the hands of the individuals making those decisions.
In a 1923 ruling, the Supreme Court recognized that “the right to marry, establish a home and bring up children” was an essential expression of the due process clause of the 14th Amendment.
The Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision striking down federal protection of abortion put the right to pursue that dream at risk: In February, Alabama fertility clinics were forced to shut their doors to patients who were in the middle of fertility treatments because of the state Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos were considered children. The Life at Conception Act, which states that the right to life begins at fertilization, has 131 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives. The Right to IVF Act has failed to pass the Senate twice this year. In September, only two Republican senators voted for it: Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance wasn’t one of them. He skipped the vote.
Yet the party line from Republicans is that they support helping Americans have children. Donald Trump has even said the government will fund IVF if he wins. Yet in a Trump presidency, IVF access could start to look like the current state of abortion access, offered on a state-by-state basis. If a Republican state supports fetal personhood, IVF clinics and hospitals might be forced to stop providing services. It would be risky for fertility clinics to operate in Republican states where they might be shut down with little warning. The result would be chaos and devastation for patients and providers, especially those for whom IVF is a prolonged process.
After our daughter died, I learned that the company I was working for offered IVF coverage and a surrogacy stipend. My husband and I agreed to try one more time. After a nerve-racking nine months, our daughter, Carolina, was born.
Shortly after she arrived, my husband was leaning over the bassinet looking at our daughter when our eyes met. He said what I’d been thinking: “I’m so glad we didn’t give up.”
My daughter Carolina is one of the more than 12 million babies who have been born because of access to IVF. It’s crucial to remember the complex, often heart-wrenching stories behind every one of those children. Please, vote with us in mind in November. As Robert Edwards, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for developing IVF, once said, “Nothing is more special than a child.”
Lia Buffa De Feo, New York
Ramesh Ponnuru’s recent op-ed is too quick to dismiss the very real and present threats to in vitro fertilization because of recent legislative and judicial actions.
Let’s start with the basics: Just as an egg is not a chicken, an embryo is not a child. Laws and courts that equate embryos with children are disingenuous and dangerous to IVF practice. Mr. Ponnuru says there won’t be an outright ban on IVF because of its popularity, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t already a serious chilling effect on providers and patients because of today’s politics.
Recent attacks, including the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling, put highly trained and skilled doctors and embryologists at legal risk and severely limit both patients’ access to IVF and research to improve it. In Alabama, multiple fertility clinics closed immediately, reopening only after an emergency stopgap law was passed.
Moreover, so-called personhood laws, which assert that life begins at fertilization, are a real threat to IVF. These unscientific laws invite criminal or civil prosecutions for standard-of-care IVF practices such as cryopreservation, genetic testing and disposal of embryos, all of which are integral to safe and effective IVF treatments. With such laws, states can halt IVF services without banning them outright, causing doctors, clinics and patients to resort to older, less safe and less effective methods.
IVF advances such as cryopreservation, single embryo transfer and preimplantation genetic testing have made IVF safer, more effective and more accessible. These innovations should be celebrated and expanded upon. Tragically, investments in IVF research are woefully inadequate, especially since the federal government is already barred from funding it.
I would bet most Americans would like more focus on protecting access to standard-of-care IVF and funding the critical gaps in research that can make it more successful and more affordable. IVF has been a miracle for countless families of all political backgrounds, but without more access and research, and less politics, the dream that future patients have of bearing children will remain just that: a dream.
Susan L. Crockin, Washington
The writer is a senior scholar at Georgetown Law Center’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law.
How to interpret flip-flops
What do Republicans gain by switching sides on abortion and sending mixed messages on in vitro fertilization in 2024? Yes, abortion is an important political issue. But how will American voters know their leaders will not switch back?
I live in Georgia, where I have worked for five years as a medical assistant. For the past two years, I have worked in an obstetrics and gynecology office where we care for women trying to conceive and women who are pregnant. I have seen the struggles both of women who want to be mothers and of those who know they should not be because of their circumstances. Either way, becoming a mother is a private, personal choice. We should leave those decisions to the people making them.
Access to IVF treatment is also a sensitive issue because it is an extensive process that begins with counseling with a fertility specialist and several medications for months to help stimulate egg production. Once the eggs have matured, the doctor removes them, and then a lab mixes them with partner or donor sperm. If successful, the embryos are transferred back into the mother’s womb. Until the eggs are transferred into the womb and start to develop, they do not have a heartbeat.
The Republicans who are flip-flopping on abortion and IVF for the election year should be thinking about the trust of their constituents, specifically women of childbearing age. What message are you sending by changing your stance from one year to the next? The pro-choice voters will be reluctant to trust that you will stay on their side, and the pro-life voters will also be conflicted. If IVF treatment is not protected, then they will be sending the message to millions of women unable to have children naturally that they probably never will.
Khala Grau, Pendergrass, Ga.
What ‘leave it to the states’ means
Regarding the Oct. 6 online article “Vance says Trump administration would end funding to Planned Parenthood”:
The Post rightly points out Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance’s contradictory stance on abortion. In the Ohio senator’s recent debate with the Democratic vice-presidential contender, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Mr. Vance seemed to soften his views on abortion, saying he wants to let voters decide their state’s stance. Now, he’s stating that he wants to defund the largest abortion provider in the United States.
As Mr. Vance acknowledged at the debate, Ohio voters made our voices heard last fall by voting to protect abortion and maintain patients’ access to providers such as Planned Parenthood, which are trusted centers to provide that care. In fact, 57 percent of voters supported the constitutional amendment to protect abortion access.
But Mr. Vance’s promise to let the states decide conceals what happens even after such victories for abortion access. After we successfully codified abortion into the state constitution last fall, Republican lawmakers fought to weaken and undermine those protections at every turn. They attempted to raise the threshold to pass a citizen-initiated constitutional amendment. Even after the measure passed, those same opponents attempted to block its implementation.
We have achieved significant progress in Ohio thanks to Issue 1: Abortion is now legal until 22 weeks of pregnancy, same-day abortions are now available, and providers are no longer required to walk through a pamphlet of medically inaccurate information with patients before providing them care. These victories have been hard-fought and involved months-long battles in Ohio courts. They have allowed us to be a haven for patients in other states whose governments have instituted draconian bans forcing them to travel to receive care.
But laws matter only if there are doctors and clinics available to provide care. Defunding Planned Parenthood would strip Ohioans — and millions of other Americans — of essential health-care services beyond abortion, including cancer screenings, testing for sexually transmitted infections and birth control. Mr. Vance uses the example of Ohio’s successful Issue 1 vote to justify his leave-it-to-the-states stance on abortion only when it’s convenient. His support for defunding Planned Parenthood shows his true intent.
Lauren Blauvelt, Columbus, Ohio
The writer is executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio.
