IVF gave me my family, and the far-right wants to take away that opportunity

By Susie Lee

Sunday, July 7, 2024 | 2 a.m.

Women in America: Wake up.

Your freedom and your choice are under attack. Since the fall of Roe v. Wade two years ago, the extreme far-right have time and again shown that they are more concerned about controlling women than protecting life.

Earlier this year, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are to be considered children under state law, meaning that if an embryo does not survive in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment, a woman, her doctor or an IVF clinic would be at risk of criminal prosecution. Almost immediately, IVF clinics across the state halted their treatments for fear that their efforts to help parents start or grow a family would be considered illegal.

And now in the U.S. Congress, extreme House Republicans have even attempted to ban funding for doctors, clinics and insurers that provide IVF services to veterans and service members. These are people who risked their lives to protect our freedoms around the world. Some of them even suffer infertility because of exposure that occurred during their service. Anti-choice extremists want to eliminate access to technology that can help these brave men and women conceive when they come home.

This issue is deeply personal because IVF gave me my two beautiful children.

Infertility is an illness and IVF is the treatment. And there is no treatment more pro-life than IVF. Millions of parents around the world have used it to start or grow their family. And yet, when Republicans in Congress had the opportunity to protect IVF at the national level, they rejected those efforts.

What keeps me up at night is knowing that the Alabama decision is not an isolated incident. Rather, it is a building block in the far-right’s much broader effort to control the choices women make about their own bodies.

It started with overturning Roe v. Wade, which led to 21 states restricting or banning abortion, and now they are coming after IVF and contraception. I worry that this could lead to the ultimate goal of banning abortion nationwide with no exceptions. Last Congress, 167 Republicans signed on to legislation to do just that and more than 100 have supported it this Congress. That’s on top of 115 pieces of legislation in Congress that have been introduced to restrict women’s reproductive freedom.

And, according to The New York Times, Donald Trump has said that he would support a nationwide abortion ban if elected president.

If that happens, it will not matter that Nevadans have voted repeatedly to protect a woman’s right to choose. That right would disappear.

That’s why we need to pass the Access to Family Building Act, which I co-sponsored, to establish a legal right to IVF and other assisted reproductive services. Without it, women everywhere remain vulnerable to extreme courts and politicians in Washington.

I call on all my Republican colleagues to sign onto our legislation to protect IVF for families everywhere.

A woman’s reproductive and health care choices belong between her and her doctor — not in a state Supreme Court, not in the U.S. Supreme Court, and not in Congress.

Susie Lee is a U.S. Congresswoman from Nevada’s 3rd District. She is co-chair of the Bipartisan Women’s Caucus and vice chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus.