South Carolina women, physicians and legislators are vigorously moving to protect fertility care in the Palmetto State in the wake of a Feb. 16 decision by the Alabama Supreme Court to grant personhood to frozen embryos.
House Bill 5157 and Senate Bill 1121 in the S.C. General Assembly seek to secure protections for fertility treatments, particularly in vitro fertilization, also known as IVF.
IVF is a procedure that involves retrieving patients’ egg and sperm samples and combining the two in a laboratory. A fertilized embryo — or sometimes more than one embryo — is then transferred to the woman’s uterus. However, embryos, eggs and sperm can all be frozen and stored for long periods of time, if needed.
“We must protect IVF at all costs,” S.C. Rep. Spencer Wetmore, D-Charleston, told the Charleston City Paper. “I can’t believe it isn’t a unanimous sentiment that our S.C. families should be able to become parents.”
Under Alabama’s court ruling, any bad outcome for any stored embryos could be criminalized, said Dr. John Schnorr, founder of Coastal Fertility Specialists, a statewide fertility care practice with Charleston-area locations in Mount Pleasant and Summerville.
“What they did in Alabama criminalizes the taking care of embryos over time,” he explained. “If they were harmed in an embryology lab, for example, everyone involved could be held liable.”
Schnorr said that makes it harder for fertility clinics to retain embryologists, but also makes women less likely to seek treatment in the first place.
“We want patients to have a personal choice in how they choose to go about their request for fertility care and how they go about having children,” he said. “Infertility affects about one in nine couples already, so it’s very common, and we’re seeing an influx of more people dealing with it. The good news is that with persistence, our success rates are well over 95%.”
With more than 2,000 new patients each year, that’s considered a high success rate, Schnorr said, adding the success rate is what is threatened in Alabama now and has come under threat before in South Carolina. He pointed to past efforts in the Statehouse that could have threatened fertility treatment through more extreme abortion bans as an example.
Protections on the way
Schnorr said while there are some protective carve-outs currently in place, they could be easily removed in the future, and until there is a crystal-clear law in place, fertility will remain under threat.
“We look forward to some national legislation that protects these patients across the country,” he said. “For now, I think it’s as simple as to say for patients undergoing fertility treatments, personhood would not be applied to their eggs, sperm or embryos.”
And that’s exactly the language the S.C. House is looking at.
“Any fertilized human egg or human embryo that exists in any form outside of the uterus of a human body shall not, under any circumstance, be considered an unborn child, a minor child, an unborn person, an unborn fetus, a natural person, or any other term that connotes a human being for any purpose under state law,” H. 5157 reads.
These protections have been a long-time coming, said S.C. Rep. J.A. Moore, D-Berkeley.
“One of the things we saw in legislation that came from the past several years in women’s health care rights was this looming threat of IVF treatment,” he told the City Paper. “A number of people in my district have reached out to me specifically about making sure that health care is protected. And I have family members who’ve had children with the help of IVF treatment, so it’s important to me personally, too.”
‘A bigger issue’
Moore said the conversation around IVF and fertility treatments is a reflection of the greater attack on women’s health care in conservative states.
“Women’s health care rights in general are under attack all the time here in South Carolina,” Moore said. “It’s a war. These little battles come up often. … This is a bigger issue. These radical legislators and organizations want to control every aspect of people’s lives.”
During a bipartisan Feb. 29. press conference held by the S.C. Democratic Caucus, S.C. Sen. Penry Gustafson, R-Kershaw, said the issue went beyond party lines.
“Protecting IVF treatments has nothing to do with politics, it’s not a Republican or Democratic issue,” she said. “We’re talking about embryos outside the mother’s womb. It’s unfortunate we need to go there; this is a preventative measure to avoid closings of preventative centers.”
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