What is IVF and why is it used to help families struggling with infertility

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (WNDU) - Many families have questions about IVF after an Alabama Supreme Court ruled embryos by law are children.

IVF stands for in vitro fertilization, and it is a procedure nearly 2% of women use to get pregnant.

IVF is widely known as a type of art, not with paint and brushes but as an assisted reproductive technology. It works by using a combination of medicines and surgical procedures to help fertilize an egg and help the fertilized egg implant into a uterus.

According to Planned Parenthood, this is how the procedure works.

• First, a woman starts taking medication for several months which makes several eggs mature and ready for fertilization. This is commonly known as ovulation.
• Then, the patient will go through egg retrieval, where the doctor will remove eggs from the body and mix them with sperm in a lab.
• This is called insemination, and during this process, as the cells in the fertilized eggs start to split, they become embryos.
• Then, one or more embryos will be put into the uterus.

U.S. Representative Debbie Dingell expressed that what is going on in Alabama is just one example of how the federal government wants to control women’s health care.

“You don’t know how hard it is or a woman that wants to have a child, the men and woman, husband and wife, wanting to have a child. so when you suddenly see the senate republican campaign committee, our own speaker of the house, saying that they support IVF, they understand what they’ve done to women,” she said. “It is the starkest and clearest example that the federal government is trying to get into a woman’s personal health care and the decisions she has to make with her dr. Her family and her religion.”

IVF does increase the possibility of getting pregnant, but there is no guarantee, as everyone’s body is different.

Kindbody is a fertility clinic with offices throughout the country, and they released a statement about the Alabama Supreme Court ruling reading in part:

“For many of our patients, embryos represent the hope of realizing their dream of starting or expanding their families. The Alabama Supreme Court ruling undermines this hope by subjecting embryos to legal scrutiny and forcing patients to live with the devastating prospect of not having the ability to make decisions about their reproductive futures.”

To read Kindbody’s full statement, click here.

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