Real IVF Facing Real Consequences

You likely have heard or read about so-called “personhood” bills being considered across the United States. Perhaps this has left you wondering what they are and how they may impact people trying to grow much wanted families. Though I am neither lawyer nor physician, I want to try to help answer some key questions about the significant legal implications of policies regarding embryos. This is not about how you may personally feel about embryos - your own or in general.

The term personhood is essentially shorthand for granting the legal rights of a “human being” at the moment of fertilization or conception.

Laws like these would give legal rights to an embryo and would grant the embryo equal standing under the law as a living person. This jeopardizes the practice of in vitro fertilization (IVF) as we know it today or “Real IVF”, which according to Dr. Antonio Gargiulo, former reproductive sciences professor at Harvard Medical School, is “IVF with no limitations on eggs inseminated, embryos frozen, or genetic testing.” The goals of IVF patients and their providers are healthy pregnancies and births. However, granting legal rights to embryos and IVF are incompatible, since many core elements of IVF could be considered “dangerous” to embryos.

IVF patients certainly do not need an overview of IVF, but others reading this may, so here goes. During IVF, medications are used to stimulate the patient’s ovaries to make multiple eggs, which are surgically retrieved and then fertilized with sperm, hopefully resulting in several embryos from one cycle. As described by Dr. Aaron Styer, Co-Medical Director of CCRM Boston, “The embryo(s) can either be transferred into the uterus to begin pregnancy, can be frozen for future use, or can undergo genetic testing and be frozen for future transfer”.

However, under personhood laws, cryopreservation or genetic testing could be deemed illegal. Also, patients may be forced to transfer any embryo that is created (or all of them), even if there is a high risk of maternal and fetal complications, loss, or other severe health issues. People could even be forced to donate embryos to others, which is the case in places like Poland.

“Embryos have incredible biologic potential but are also microscopic and extremely delicate structures made up of just a few cells. It is indeed not rare that, without malice and almost always without a clear explanation, fresh or frozen embryos do not survive and do not get a chance of being transferred into the uterus. Obviously, there is no implicit fault of anybody in such an ephemeral process. Yet legislators are reasoning on who should be punished and how. This could lead to IVF being practiced generally based on the fear of legal repercussions rather than science and logic,” explained Dr. Gargiulo, Director of Advanced Reproductive Surgery at Fertility Centers of New England.

These are examples of how policies giving legal rights to embryos could impact IVF, with medical providers unclear and afraid about what health care they can legally deliver to patients, to the point they will stop providing IVF services due to fears of legal prosecution. These policies actually threaten all reproductive health care, including abortion care and even contraception.

Unfortunately, yes. We saw this last year when the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos were “children” under the state’s wrongful death law. The Court’s decision stopped short of giving full constitutional rights to fetuses or embryos, but its impact still had a swift and chilling effect on fertility health care. Three major fertility practices in Alabama ceased IVF services immediately, and treatment only resumed after legislation was passed to protect IVF providers from civil and criminal charges (though not addressing the underlying legal implications). These experiences in Alabama were scary for everyone who cares about safe, accessible fertility care and showed us that – sadly – concerns about granting legal rights to embryos are valid.

Giving legal rights to fetuses opens the door to potential investigations and prosecutions of people who experience loss and other challenges during pregnancy, including ectopic or chemical pregnancies, miscarriage or stillbirth. Patients undergoing pregnancy loss deserve and need compassionate, appropriate health care. Adding legal and criminal concerns, thus magnifying their grief, is unconscionable. Unfortunately, this is not hypothetical or exaggerated. This can happen, and in fact, IS happening already in the United States. A woman in Georgia was recently arrested following a miscarriage and charged with discarding a dead body.

Yes. The Guttmacher Institute tracks sexual and reproductive health bills in state legislatures across the nation and found that as of March 15, 2025, 27 “fetal personhood” bills have been introduced so far this year. An article in The Cut reported that “by comparison, there were 23 similar state-level measures introduced in all of 2024, and just five in 2023”. There is also a federal bill called the “Life at Conception” Act, which currently has 73 cosponsors. You may think that bills like this would not come up in the state or region where you live, but that is probably not the case, as there is legislation like this in all different states, including in the New England region.

AllPaths Family Building wants people to be able to make informed decisions about their own bodies and families, in collaboration with their loved ones and their medical providers - not with arbitrary government interference. These are fundamental, personal decisions. Policies that give legal rights to embryos threaten this core principle - and the provision of reproductive health care.