Every month I do a post saying “abortions are good” and send a donation to Aid Access (where you can order abortion pills online, right now, even if you live somewhere with a ban, even if you’re not currently pregnant, you can get them from Plan C Pills too). This month I also want to remind you that abortion restrictions hurt EVERYONE, even people who are actively trying to get pregnant.

CW for pregnancy loss on everything I link to in this post.

Alabama’s Supreme Court just ruled that the frozen embryos used in IVF are “extrauterine children” and that the states wrongful death laws apply to “all unborn children, regardless of their location.” There’s a good explanation of the case here.

This matters because creating lots of embryos at once (which is much safer for the person trying to get pregnant) and freezing them until they’re needed is a big part of how IVF works, and about half the embryos created through IVF die (as do a huge percentage of the embryos created the old fashioned way, just usually without anyone knowing about it). There’s a good explanation of the general process of IVF here.

After this ruling, it’s unclear what will happen when those embryos die or to the embryos left over when someone is done with IVF. As a result, several IVF clinics in Alabama have stopped some forms of IVF treatment, and the rest are trying to figure out how they’re allowed to help people who desperately want to get pregnant without breaking the law. There’s a good podcast (with transcript) about how this might affect IVF here.

This is only going to get worse. Other states are considering similar fetal personhood questions, and they’re all based in attempts to limit access to abortion. Everyone deserves bodily autonomy, and any attempt to limit it hurts us all.

You should be doing everything you can to fight it. Because if it hasn’t hurt you or someone you love yet, it will if we don’t stop it.