A Court Decision Upending Roe Could Complicate IVF Treatments

Stateline: Abortion Bans May Add To Uncertainty Over Embryo Donation
Abigail and Rachelle Henderson, 15-year-old twins from Buffalo, New York, were conceived in vitro and carried to term by their mom, Rebecca. Trevor and Aubrey Gassman, now 9 and 8 years old, who live in Oregon, were born of embryos created during the infertility treatment of Rebecca Henderson and her husband, Chris. The couple donated the embryos through a Christian agency to Dan and Kelli Gassman, and Kelli carried them to term. (Povich, 6/10)

ABC News: Why Doctors Say The 'Save The Mother's Life' Exception Of Abortion Bans Is Medically Risky
But doctors told ABC News the language of these laws is vague and makes it unclear what qualifies as a mother's life being in danger, what the risk of death is, and how imminent death must be before a provider can act. "We've taken the Hippocratic oath to do no harm, and these types of laws and this type of language actually do harm," Dr. Melissa Simon, vice chair for research in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, told ABC News. "I do not -- nor do my patients want me to -- stop what I'm doing and think about what the judge would do: 'Will the judge sentence me to jail if I were to perform an abortion?'" (Kekatos, 6/13)

The Boston Globe: Overturning Roe V. Wade Would Set Women Back Decades, Damage Economy, Experts Say 
The Supreme Court decided nearly 50 years ago that women had a right to an abortion, with the justices in the majority — some of them conservative, all of them male — specifically highlighting how a lack of reproductive freedom could hamper women’s lives and careers. “The detriment that the State would impose upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice altogether is apparent,” the justices wrote. “Maternity, or additional offspring, may force upon the woman a distressful life and future.” In the five decades since then, a body of research has proven those words prescient. (Puzzanghera, 6/12)

Politico: State Supreme Courts: Bottom Of The Ballot But Top Concern If Roe Falls
The right to abortion in some states could come down to a handful of people running for positions most voters pay little attention to: state supreme court justices. State courts are likely to be flooded with litigation that could require them to rule on access to abortion — or even contraception and fertility treatments — should the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade in the coming weeks. (Messerly, 6/13)

On maternity care —

AP: Amid Abortion Debate, Clinic Asks: Who's Caring For Moms? 
Miracle Allen used her last tank of gas to drive an hour and 15 minutes to the closest clinic that would care for her and her unborn baby. Allen, 29, was four months pregnant when Hurricane Ida ripped through her Houma, Louisiana, community. She spent three nights in the remnants of a house with a torn roof and no electricity. Her car was all she had left. So Allen — along with her 6-year-old daughter, her mother and a niece — fled in it to the rural Mississippi town of Kosciusko, where family lives. Her first priority was finding a doctor to check on her baby boy. But the lone local obstetrician splits her work between two rural counties and wasn’t taking new patients. Allen couldn’t find another doctor even within an hour’s drive — certainly not one who’d take a patient without insurance or an ID, which was destroyed in her home by Ida. (Willingham, 6/12)

Houston Bureau Chief: The Antiabortion Movement Fuels A Growth Industry: Pregnancy Centers 
Rayenieshia Cole did not want another child. She couldn’t afford it. A single mother who made her living dancing at a strip club, she had few relatives in Texas to help raise her three boys. When Cole learned she was pregnant last fall, she visited an abortion clinic, where she passed an ultrasound screening — Texas had just enacted a law prohibiting abortion after about six weeks — and made an appointment to return the next day to end her pregnancy. (Hennessey-Fiske, 6/12)

How strict abortion bans in Poland and El Salvador have devastated families —

The New York Times: Poland Shows The Risks For Women When Abortion Is Banned 
It was shortly before 11 p.m. when Izabela Sajbor realized the doctors were prepared to let her die. Her doctor had already told her that her fetus had severe abnormalities and would almost certainly die in the womb. If it made it to term, life expectancy was a year, at most. At 22 weeks pregnant, Ms. Sajbor had been admitted to a hospital after her water broke prematurely. She knew that there was a short window to induce birth or surgically remove the fetus to avert infection and potentially fatal sepsis. But even as she developed a fever, vomited and convulsed on the floor, it seemed to be the baby’s heartbeat that the doctors were most concerned about. (Bennhold and Pronczuk, 6/12)

AP: Salvadoran Women Jailed For Abortion Warn US Of Total Ban 
Teodora del Carmen Vásquez was nine months pregnant and working at a school cafeteria when she felt extreme pain in her back, like the crack of a hammer. She called 911 seven times before fainting in a bathroom in a pool of blood. The nightmare that followed is common in El Salvador, a heavily Catholic country where abortion is banned under all circumstances and even women who suffer miscarriages and stillbirths are sometimes accused of killing their babies and sentenced to years or even decades in prison. (Henao and Wardarski, 6/11)

AP: In Their Words: Salvadoran Women Jailed Under Abortion Ban 
Since the late 1990s, El Salvador has had a complete ban on abortion including in cases of rape, incest, fetal malformation or danger to a pregnant woman’s life. Not only planned abortions but also miscarriages, stillbirths and other pregnancy complications can sometimes result in prosecution and lengthy prison terms. Often women who end up being targeted by authorities are poor and live in rural areas. The Associated Press spoke with several women who served time in such cases. (Henao and Wardarski, 6/10)