Political Quotes

“Madam President, I rise today to speak in support of my bill to protect IVF. Elissa Smith was living in Alabama when she heard the news this past February. She had been pregnant a few years earlier, but it had left her with scars, both emotionally and physically. She had been in her third trimester with her first child when she had learned that she had cancer. She gave birth early to a beautiful baby girl. Then soon after, she underwent surgery, chemotherapy, multiple medical procedures--you name it--a care plan that helped to get rid of the disease but that also left her unable to conceive again. Thankfully, she had than undergone one round of IVF before her treatment for cancer. Fast forward to early 2024, things were finally getting brighter. She and her husband had just begun to research surrogates to carry her viable embryos. Then, a gavel sounded out of her State courthouse, marking the ruling that changed theirs and so many other families' lives. On February 16, the Alabama Supreme Court declared that frozen extrauterine embryos created through IVF should be considered children under State law--a ruling that painted would-be moms and their doctors as criminals and one that uprooted the dreams and began the nightmares of aspiring parents, as IVF clinics statewide soon paused treatments out of fear that their doctors and patients would be punished for trying to start families. Elissa was one of these women.…”