TN bill protecting IVF, birth control fails
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) – Women across the country are on edge after an Alabama Supreme Court ruling led to the essential pause of in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment.
On Tuesday, March 5, a bill working to protect birth control and IVF treatments in Tennessee failed.
“Our intent here is not to allow abortions after that embryo has been brought into the mother and brought alive, is that correct?” state Rep. Ron Travis (R-Dayton) clarified with the bill sponsor, state Rep. Harold Love Jr. (D-Nashville).
“I would say this conversation right here I think justifies the need for the bill. I’m being very serious,” Love responded.
Love’s bill looked to explicitly protect IVF and birth control access in Tennesse, saying the two don’t fall under the umbrella of “abortion.”
“I would hope that we would not miss this opportunity while we’re here now, with this bill to clarify, so we don’t have to come back next January with a bill to clarify while families wait six to nine to 12 months,” Love said.
Alabama lawmakers are now scrambling to ensure the right to IVF treatments once again, after the state’s Supreme Court decision dropped at the end of February.
One mom who wants to make sure Tennessee never gets to that point is Kelli Nowers, who testified at Tuesday’s hearing. The executive director of AWAKE Tennessee used IVF to conceive her 17-month-old son and daughter now on the way.
“It was very disappointing and I was angry,” Nowers said. “If what happened in Alabama happened in Tennessee, and I was in the process that we were in a couple months ago, it would’ve been a completely different experience.”
Ultimately, lawmakers opted not to pass the bill, with some wanting to rely on the attorney general’s current interpretation, which does seem to protect IVF and birth control. However, some fear that could change in the future with new lawmakers or new attorneys general.
“While IVF and birth control continue to remain legal now, we are just very concerned that that might not always be the case,” said Briana Perry, interim executive director of Healthy and Free Tennessee. “And so, there’s nothing currently stopping, in the law stopping what happened in Alabama from happening here in Tennessee.”
Nowers still has embryos frozen in the State of Tennessee. She said the unknown brings about fear over her own future, as well as others wanting to become parents.
“What that means about my future kids, my friends who might want to start a family and this being their only option, what that means about the embryos that we have in the state,” Nowers said.
