A Hidden Cost to Reversing Roe

The rise of 'personhood' laws could put infertility treatments like IVF at risk and sharply raise their price

- KHALEDA RAHMAN

WHEN TERESA BARBOSA MARRIED her husband Michael, children were always part of the plan. The couple was delighted when she became pregnant a few years later, but their joy soon turned to despair. "As we prepped for this new chapter, a fire destroyed our home," she told Newsweek. "In the ashes of our home, we learned that my pregnancy was terminating. Everything was literally crumbling around us."

Over the next decade, the couple drained their life savings paying for round after round of in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments that were unsuccessful. "We E KHA RAH were broken emotionally and financially," she says.

In 2019, the couple adopted Sofia, now 5, and Barbosa founded the nonprofit Gift of Parenthood to help others in dire need-many of them women of color like herpay for IVF treatments. Gift of Parenthood awards quarterly grants, Barbosa said, and that funding has helped about 10 babies be born to families who desperately want them.

As the fall of Roe v. Wade continues to reverberate across the U.S., Barbosa and others fear the Supreme Court's decision could have far-reaching consequences that go beyond regulating abortion and put IVF in jeopardy. Several states have bans that define "life" as beginning at the moment of fertilization. Others want to move further and introduce "personhood laws" that give fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses the same rights as those already born.

That could lead to penalties for discarding embryos and limit how many eggs can be fertilized per IVF cycle, experts tell Newsweek. Doing so would reduce the chances of success and drive up the cost, they say.