Michigan residents are concerned about protecting IVF ahead of November election

On Aug. 20, during the second night of the Democratic National Convention, Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois spoke about her yearslong struggle with infertility. It was only through the “miracle of IVF,” or in vitro fertilization, Duckworth said, that she was able to give birth to her two daughters. 

On the same night, former first lady Michelle Obama shared that she and her husband, former President Barack Obama, had also used IVF to help them conceive. 

“Cutting our health care, taking away our freedom to control our bodies — the freedom to become a mother through IVF, like I did — those things are not going to improve the health outcomes of our wives, mothers, and daughters,” Obama said. 

Although most Republicans have said they support IVF, Senate Republicans blocked legislation in June that would have protected a person’s right to access it.

The Republican Party’s 2024 platform says that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution “guarantees that no person can be denied Life or Liberty without Due Process and that the States are, therefore, free to pass Laws protecting those Rights.” 

Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California Davis School of Law, said Republicans could use the 14th Amendment to argue that unborn fetuses and fertilized embryos have the same rights as people.

“The anti-abortion movement argued that the word ‘person’ in the 14th Amendment applied the moment an egg was fertilized. And then they further argued that that meant liberal laws on things like abortion and IVF were in fact unconstitutional.” Ziegler told the Michigan Independent.

Nikki Sapiro Vinckier is a physician assistant at an OB-GYN practice in Metro Detroit. Her work focuses on fertility planning and care. Sapiro Vinckier told the Michigan Independent that legal fetal personhood — laws stating that a fetus or embryo has the same legal rights as a person — could very well limit access to IVF.

In IVF, multiple embryos are fertilized, but only one is implanted in the uterus. The rest of the fertilized embryos are either discarded or kept frozen. A fetal personhood law could be used to make it a crime to discard any fertilized embryos, legal experts say. It could also make abortion a crime tantamount to murder, even in cases of rape, incest or medical emergency. 

Stephanie Jones is a mother of two who lives in Grand Blanc, Michigan. She told the Michigan Independent that one of her children was born using surrogacy. 

Jones, who founded the Michigan Fertility Alliance, said that in 2016, she suffered a rare and nearly fatal ectopic pregnancy, requiring her to receive lifesaving abortion care. After her surgery, she was unable to become pregnant without medical intervention.

“I needed access to IVF and IUI [intrauterine insemination] to grow our family after that,” Jones said. “So it’s the nuances that we’re talking about. But realistically, if you look at the amount of children in our country that are born through IVF, it’s really hundreds of thousands of children, and it boils down to a simple fact that access to IVF is access to health care.”

Sapiro Vinckier says that attacks on reproductive rights are all connected.”

“The way in which it was abortion first and they were coming for abortion, and then it was the Alabama ruling on fetal personhood that everybody was like, Oh, no, now they’re coming for IVF,” she said. “The writing is on the wall for contraceptives also.”

Jones said she is concerned about the possibility of people losing access to IVF, which is why she’ll be voting in November.

“Infertility does not discriminate, and it doesn’t care what side of the aisle you’re on or what your religious beliefs are or what color your skin is. And we need to realize that. So we’re not voting for an ideology. We are actually voting for health care and access to health care,” Jones said.