The Future Of Fertility Treatment
1A
NPR
4.3 • 4.5K Ratings
🗓️ 15 December 2022
⏱️ 32 minutes
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Summary
Fetal personhood would grant a fetus' or embryo the same rights as a person. That idea — which is already a provision in Georgia's abortion ban — has opened the door to discussions about if fertility treatment could be subject to regulation next.
Some states like West Virginia have specifically carved out exceptions in their abortion laws for fertility treatments such as in vitro fertilization or IVF.
We discuss where fertility treatments and contraception legally stand.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Grace and I live in the greater Austin area. |
| 0:12.2 | I'm in the process of helping my family members with starting their family at the gestational |
| 0:18.4 | career. |
| 0:19.4 | And we've had one failed transfer so far and so we're regrouping and trying again. |
| 0:24.1 | Since then, the overturn of Roe v. Wade happened and it has absolutely added a deeper level |
| 0:30.5 | of complexity to this process. |
| 0:32.3 | There's a lot more concern about my safety and it's something that we've had to discuss |
| 0:38.6 | as a family. |
| 0:39.6 | I'm Ann from Manchester, New Hampshire. |
| 0:42.7 | I did IVF about three years ago in this state and now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned. |
| 0:50.5 | Actually, the clinics have been reaching out to patients to ask if you want to discard |
| 0:56.1 | embryos you need to decide now just to be safe in case that right is taken away from |
| 1:02.1 | us. |
| 1:03.1 | So everyone is a little bit more nervous going into these treatments and we don't really |
| 1:07.8 | know what to expect. |
| 1:09.5 | About 2% of infants born in the US each year are conceived with assisted reproductive |
| 1:14.3 | technology. |
| 1:15.3 | That's according to the Centers for Disease Control. |
| 1:18.0 | And that includes IVF or in vitro fertilization. |
| 1:22.4 | It's where an egg is frozen and fertilized outside the body. |
| 1:26.6 | Then that embryo is implanted in the uterus. |
| 1:29.4 | But now the future of IVF and other reproductive technologies seems uncertain. |
... |
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