As Alabama Essentially Bans IVF, My Husband and I Write a Thank You Letter to Our Egg Donor
Earlier this month, Alabama’s Supreme Court took a major step towards making in vitro fertilization (IVF) and any assisted reproductive technology (ART) that relies on embryos impossible within the state.
Top news outlets including Huffpost (1), Advocate (2), and the New York Times (3) have covered this story and the implications for reproductive rights in the state and the nation. Essentially, the Alabama Supreme Court has ruled that embryos created through IVF should be recognized as ‘children,’ and has allowed people to sue for ‘murder’ for a lab’s error in thawing frozen embryos.
After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade last year, women’s rights and reproductive rights in America have been on shaky ground.
However, Alabama’s move threatens reproductive rights even further, as this now also implicates men who want to have children through IVF and surrogacy. BabyMoon Family’s mission is to support and help men all over the world pursue their dreams of becoming fathers through these processes. While the United States is the world leader in ART, Alabama has shown that this can easily be taken away, and that we have to fight to maintain access to these scientific procedures.
While I and BabyMoon Family are ready for this fight, I do sometimes find the ‘arena’ to be unfair. By this I mean that we — the queer men who want access to science to have a family — are battling against archaic thinking about what a ‘family’ is, who should have it, and how it should be made based on a religious text that is over 2,000 years old.
How do you engage in a battle where one side uses science and reason and the other weaponizes prejudice and outdated history?
Sadly, the 2016 presidential election and the resurgence of Donald Trump in the 2024 Republican primary has shown that previous tactics in this arena have not been successful. As an aside, it has to be said that even Trump has spoken up about supporting IVF in Alabama (4), but who is to say he won’t change his mind and those of his followers if he thinks he needs to in order to win the election?
We are a country — and in many ways a world — divided at the moment. The political landscape of the United States is not terribly different from that in Europe and other parts of the world in terms of political ideology of ‘left’ versus ‘right,’ but at least in Europe there has not been the same religious fervor to attack abortion and IVF. However, who is to say that Prime Minister Meloni may not attempt this in her horrific and ongoing fight against LGBTQ+ families (https://www.babymoonfamily.com/original-articles/italy-attacks-surrogacy-rainbow-families OR https://medium.com/@babymoonfamily/why-every-lgbtq-person-especially-intended-parents-ips-should-be-furious-at-italy-right-now-cfb8a4382532)?
At the moment, I don’t have a solution to this argument, but I do have the ability to share the hope and optimism that my husband and I are currently experiencing on our journey to fatherhood.
We are pursuing our IVF and surrogacy process in California, the leading U.S. state in terms of LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights. Because of this, we have the pleasure of now writing a thank you letter to our egg donor.
This is such a lovely part of the process. While we have not and will likely never meet our egg donor in person, we have spent hours combing over donor profiles and her’s in particular. We know her well enough to know that she is who we want to help us to create our family, and it is not embellishment to say we could not do this without her.
Being able to convey those emotions, this joy, and our incredible thanks to her is a beautiful thing. It is one of the many beautiful parts about IVF and having children through the genius of science.
While we want to keep the letter private between us and her, I did want to share this excerpt to emphasize how excited and happy we are, and how we will translate that into the love we will have for our children:
We want you to know that all the children we end up having will be so loved, so cherished, and we will do everything we can to give them the best possible life.
As I think more about Alabama and the potential larger fight for IVF and surrogacy rights for queer men, perhaps this is the argument that will win the fight: Showing them that our families and our love is no different from theirs.
I will continue to share my personal journey to fatherhood, and BabyMoon Family will continue to highlight, support, and advocate for queer men around the world to pursue IVF and surrogacy.
If you are a queer man in Alabama who was pursuing or considering IVF and want help, support, or advice, please feel free to reach out to bryan@babymoonfamily.com.
We will get through this together.
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