Two years ago, I was happily pregnant and preparing for life as a stay-at-home mom when my world unraveled. My 19-week anatomy scan was abnormal, and I was sent to my local perinatologist. They further referred me to specialists at the Children’s Hospital in Denver, but I had to wait several weeks for an appointment. The interim was filled with whiplash. One provider downplayed the severity of the issues and another gently introduced the idea of termination. I couldn’t comprehend the latter’s analysis. This was a wanted pregnancy; why would I end it?
My trip to Denver was full of specialized medical tests. At the end of the day, we had a family meeting where medical experts from what felt like every discipline explained how they would be involved in trying to keep my son alive.
My son was diagnosed with Eagle-Barrett, for which I am a carrier; there is a 50/50 chance that I will pass it on to my children. Eagle-Barrett is an extremely rare and complicated congenital disorder that affects the development of the abdominal muscles and renal system. No one could tell me what my son’s pain would be like or if he would survive the surgeries required after birth. All they could do was promise to “Frankenstein” his fragile body together in an attempt to sustain life. I didn’t want to subject him to that.
U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), a recipient of IVF treatment, is joined by fellow Democrats holding photos of families who have benefited from IVF treatment, during a press conference on the Right to IVF Act, outside of the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 17.
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My husband and I sat on the bench outside the hospital, and I wondered how many tears had been shed in such abundance there—an unassuming monument to parental grief. We knew we could not bring our son into that horrible future. We needed to end the pregnancy. I now understood what the provider had meant. She was suggesting mercy.
It disturbs me now to think that amid a medical tragedy, it was the stigma surrounding my decision that cut the deepest. We would never think that of someone needing chemotherapy or dialysis. But a woman making a medical decision for herself and her child invites all the opinions and ire of society. The cost of my son’s peace was the burden of taboo.
Despite my status as a carrier for Eagle-Barrett syndrome, I still want to be a mother, and fortunately, conceiving through IVF allows me to screen embryos and spare a future child from this hurt. For me, IVF is an ethical means through which I can grow my family. But it’s no longer enough for anti-abortion lawmakers to demand mothers like me carry doomed pregnancies. They are now hellbent on stealing my chance to have a healthy child.
Conservative lawmakers claim that they support IVF, but their actions tell a very different story. Former President Donald Trump brazenly labeled himself a “leader on IVF,” despite his administration making it more difficult for people like me to access treatment. In September, conservative lawmakers refused to pass a comprehensive federal protections bill for IVF—a bill that was written by Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), an actual IVF patient. Who knows more about what is at risk than someone who has been through the process? While Duckworth spoke about her bill and what IVF has meant to her family, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) attacked his colleagues and protested the most recent Senate attempt to protect IVF as a “show vote.”
Good. Show us who you are, because the whole nation is watching.
It’s increasingly hard to believe the GOP is sincere in their support for fertility treatments when they insist on calling embryos “extra-uterine children,” and party members, like Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT), denounce IVF as “morally wrong.” Their position is clear: I am never to be trusted to make sound decisions around my own reproductive health.
As I look toward America’s future, I am both furious and devastated for the women whose lives have been upended by extremists’ attacks on access to reproductive health care. I intimately know their pain and share, deeply, in their rage. My abortion story isn’t unique, and it counters the premise of these cruel laws that pregnancy is always simple. My hopes for IVF are the hopes of so many others who seek to grow their families in a way that is sustainable and loving. I tell my story as an act of defiance against those who think I lack moral depth and agency. Through storytelling, I fight back.
And I share this because I know there is another family, another mother, who needs to hear a story like mine. She needs to know that she was never a bad person for choosing peace for her baby. And she was never morally corrupt for seeking medical care to conceive. It is the anti-abortion lawmakers who are despicable for taking those options away from her.
Anne Angus is based in Bozeman, Montana, and recently adjusted her own IVF treatment timeline when anti-abortion lawmakers began targeting access to IVF. Anne and her husband remain committed to growing their family.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
