The Other Medical Treatment Endangered by the Fall of Roe – By Mary Harris (Slate) / May 12, 2022
The concept of “fetal personhood” extends beyond abortion
If Roe v. Wade gets overturned, it won’t just affect women who need an abortion. For people seeking fertility treatment and their doctors, the big concern is the foundation of the fight against abortion: fetal personhood. If a fetus is a person, it raises all kinds of questions.
This is not a paranoid fear. Six states have introduced fetal personhood bills this year. A few months back, Sen. Rand Paul sent a fundraising letter to his constituents in which, after arguing “the time to grovel before the Supreme Court is over,” he asked for their support for the federal Life at Conception Act. It would declare fertilized eggs to be “persons.”
Natalie Crawford, an OB-GYN and reproductive endocrinologist in Austin, Texas, deals with fertilized eggs all the time. A normal round of in vitro fertilization means creating lots of them, watching them develop into embryos, and then implanting one or more right back into the uterus. On Thursday’s episode of What Next, I spoke to Crawford about how Roe helped pave the way for IVF and its acceptance, and how attacks on reproductive rights are already affecting her work. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
CONTINUE > https://slate.com/technology/2022/05/roe-overturn-ivf-fertility-treatment-fetal-personhood.html
