Roe v. Wade’s Fall Could Threaten Birth Control and IVF Access

Within minutes of the leaking of the draft opinion from the US Supreme Court, Elizabeth Constance, a reproductive endocrinologist at the Heartland Center for Reproductive Medicine in Omaha, Nebraska, was flooded with messages from concerned patients. They asked her what this meant for the frozen embryos. The patients are afraid, what does it mean for the egg retrieval?

If the right to abortion in the US is rolled back, the consequences will be devastating. The realities of a post-Roe world will likely not stop at abortion bans. Legal experts and bioethicists warn that many more frontiers of reproductive health are in danger.

Sean Tipton, chief advocacy, policy, and development officer of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, says that the most immediate concern is that a lot of states use language in their laws that would give legal and constitutional status to the fertilized egg. 13 states in the US have laws in place that would ban all abortions immediately if the Supreme Court overturns the landmark abortion law, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Life is defined in many laws as beginning at the moment of fertilization, although the exact language varies from state to state.

The destruction of a fertilized egg is at risk of being banned if the Supreme Court overturns Wade. Pro-lifers want to define fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetus as people with equal protections under the law.

Some anti-abortion advocates consider contraceptives like Plan B to be abortifacients because of the terminology that outlaws abortion. IUDs and emergency contraception mostly prevent pregnancies by stopping eggs from being fertilized or from being released, rather than interacting with eggs after fertilization. It could affect access to assisted reproductive therapy.

Seema Mohapatra, a law professor specializing in health law and reproductive justice at Southern Methodist University in Texas, warns that the fall of abortion could be an opportunity for pro-life politicians to push for further restrictions. It includes large swathes of states in the Midwest and the South.