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Could state abortion laws affect IVF patients? There is no easy answer

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Updated  August 9, 2022 11:56pm EDT
FOX Medical Team
FOX 5 Atlanta

Could abortion bans impact IVF patients?

Couples who have used in vitro fertilization have many questions as to if they will be impacted now that the Supreme Court has abolished Roe v. Wade, leaving the decision up to the states.

ATLANTA - When the Roe v. Wade decision came down last month, attorney Adam Wolf, whose law firm Peiffer Wolf represents fertility patients, says their phones started ringing.

"We have received hundreds of calls and emails from clients utterly concerned, frightened, about what is going to happen to their embryos," Wolf says.

Embryos are fertilized eggs, created in a laboratory.
 
Once embryos are transferred, Wolf says, any that are leftover are typically stored or discarded.

However, Wolf asks, what happens if patients live in a state that legally defines life as beginning at the point an egg is fertilized?

What happens to those embryos once the couple if finished with starting a family.

"Can a fertility clinic discard those embryos, as it has for the last number of decades, per their clients' request, or does the fertility clinic have to hold on to those embryos in perpetuity," he asks.  "And, if so, who pays for that?"

ATLANTA FERTILITY SPECIALIST BREAKS DOWN IVF

David Prentice, Ph.D., Vice President and Research Director for the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute, sees no connection between the state abortion laws and IVF.

"I think a lot of that is simple fear mongering, not so much fear," Prentice says. "If you look at the state laws, they are not really focused at all on IVF, on embryos in the lab, they're talking about a young human being who is in the womb, removing that young being from the womb."

Prentice acknowledges there is concern about how the laws might be interpreted going forward.

"But, I see no trend at all in terms of any sort of laws affecting these very young embryos, and anything that would affect IVF," he says.

Under Georgia's "heartbeat" law, abortion is banned once there is detectable cardiac activity, which is usually at about six weeks gestation.

"Perhaps you're not right now seeing the concern about storing embryos, which of course don't have heartbeats," Adam Wolf says.  "But, patients are still scared out of their minds about what happens if the state changes its law, which it's now allowed to do, under the Supreme Court's decision. "