Metro women worried that IVF may no longer be an option in the future

ATLANTA — The number of families that are using invitro fertilization is growing by the year, but so are the concerns about protections for the process and its many steps with laws targeting abortion.

Channel 2′s Candace McCowan spoke with one mother who is concerned about growing her family.

“I’ve always hoped for something like that, to have a large family that has a little bit of crazy going on but was going to be there for each other,” Laura Baston said.

Baston had a daughter but then struggled after with a miscarriage and then ectopic pregnancy. Both required D&Cs or surgery to remove the pregnancy.

That’s when Baston turned to in vitro fertilization, or IVF, and Dr. Bonnie Patel at the Atlanta Center for Reproductive Medicine.

“IVF or other fertility treatments work through saving more eggs and bringing more sperm and eggs together to create more embryos, those embryos then have to be frozen in order to be transferred into a uterus at a later time,” Patel said.

According to the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it’s a process that produced more than 2,300 babies in Georgia in 2021.

But recently, there have been concerns.

“The number of panicked calls we get after the heartbeat bill passed and the Supreme Court decision in Alabama was staggering. Patients were really worried,” Patel said.

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Georgia’s heartbeat law makes abortion illegal after a heartbeat is detected or at 6 weeks. An Alabama Supreme Court decision that ruled frozen embryos were “unborn children” also caused some to worry.

“Normally, patients should have two to three embryos frozen in order to give themselves a shot at one live birth,” Patel said. “So, if there is a bill that assigns personhood to these embryos, does that include frozen embryos? The vast majority of which will never be used or not be viable, may harbor genetic abnormalities.”

Eventually, Alabama passed a law protecting IVF.

In Georgia, House Speaker John Burns has a resolution to protect IVF that hasn’t been voted on.

But Baston is worried. She got pregnant with twins through IVF after her egg split.

But her joy was short-lived when both heartbeats disappeared.

“I went into my doctor’s appointment and there was nothing,” Baston said. “I had to walk around feeling like a coffin for my kids because this was not something that I wanted in any way. This is the worst thing I could have thought of.”

Baston is concerned that if there are more pregnancy complications, she might not get the help she needs if that need is an abortion.

“Who gets to decide when the mother’s life is threatened? What are those criteria?” Baston said. “That should be completely the call of the doctor.”

McCowan reached out to Burns about his resolution but did not hear back.

As for IVF, it’s an expensive process. But more and more companies are offering reproductive benefits to help cover those costs.

Patel and Boston want people to talk about the IVF process more, so more people understand the many nuances and steps it takes to produce the live births they’re aiming for.

Georgia Democrats also proposed a measure to protect IVF in Georgia, but that didn’t go anywhere.

IVF is becoming more and more popular as the average age for first-time childbearing is now over 30.

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