News & Blog
Local Couples Worry About Future of IVF After Fall of Roe v. Wade
Published by NBC4Washington – Read the full article.
“If we are going to say those embryos are people or a person, gosh, can we freeze them? Can we do genetic testing? … What happens if those embryos are not viable for a pregnancy, or is that murder?”
Maryland couple Jess and Josh Shumway want nothing more than to have a baby of their own. After months of unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant, they turned to fertility doctors for help.
They’ve since undergone several rounds of in vitro fertilization over the past five years, a process in which doctors attempt to fertilize eggs outside the body, with hopes to transfer a resulting embryo back into a uterus. For the Shumways, that’s resulted in 12 embryos and three pregnancies, with each ending in miscarriage.
“The cycle of grief is just constant,” Jess Shumway said. “Knock you down and you get back up and then you get knocked over again.”
Now, they are are among those worried about a new complication for the estimated one in eight couples experiencing infertility: whether the Supreme Court decision that overturned the right to have an abortion could make it even harder to have a baby.
