by Jill Nolin, Georgia Recorder, [This article first appeared in the Georgia Recorder, republished with permission]
January 27, 2025

Advocates on both sides of the fight over access to reproductive rights are gearing up for an expected debate this year over whether and how lawmakers should create new protections for access to in-vitro fertilization. 

Leadership in both Republican-controlled chambers have said they generally support putting new IVF protections in state law after a court ruling in Alabama in early 2024 jeopardized access in that state and created uncertainty nationally.

Both sides are anxiously waiting to see the details of what such a GOP-led proposal might look like. 

Claire Bartlett, executive director of the Georgia Life Alliance, said her group has not taken an official position on IVF, but there are concerns. 

During IVF, doctors typically harvest and fertilize multiple eggs in the hope that at least one results in a successful pregnancy. Unused embryos, which are only days old and invisible to the naked eye, are often allowed to thaw out and be destroyed. 

“We believe that as soon as the sperm meets an egg, that flash of light happens, unique DNA is formed as a human being, and that is what needs to be protected all the way through natural death,” Bartlett said Friday.

“So, we just need to understand, what are we talking about here?” she added. “We have a big concern about the disposition of those embryos, because right now, it’s up to the provider and the woman and her family, and it can be different across providers.” 

Zemmie Fleck, executive director of the far-right Georgia Right to Life, signaled Friday that she is wary.

“You’ve got to be careful about what you’re codifying,” Fleck said, speaking before her group’s Stand for Life event outside the state Capitol. 

There is optimism among defenders of reproductive rights that a proposal to protect IVF access will find bipartisan support this session. But there is also a sense of unease that opening up Georgia’s current statute on IVF could end up imperiling existing access. 

“I’m always in favor of codifying protection, but the devil’s in the details,” said Rep. Shea Roberts, an Atlanta Democrat. “And I don’t want us to open a door to something that could put what we have right now at risk.”

Roberts said she sees codifying protections at this point as being “proactive,” since Georgia couples do not appear to be at risk of losing access today.

Even some Republicans last year argued that additional protections for IVF were unnecessary in Georgia after Democrats introduced a late-session bill in the wake of the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos were children and that parents could claim civil damages for their destruction. 

The Democrats’ bill would have spelled out in state law that any human egg or human embryo that exists outside of the uterus “shall not, under any circumstances, be considered an unborn child, a minor child, a natural person, or any other term that connotes a human being for any purpose under state law.”

The lead sponsor of Georgia’s 2019 law has said that the law specifically excludes IVF and refers only to embryos “carried in the womb.” 

In Alabama, lawmakers quickly responded last year by passing a bill protecting fertility clinics from criminal and civil liability for offering in-vitro fertilization. 

Supporters of reproductive rights say they hope Georgia lawmakers take a different approach.

“Sometimes our state legislators try to put a Band-Aid on something that we should be healing, and I think protecting clinics is just a Band-Aid,” said Jaylen Black, vice president of communications and marketing of Planned Parenthood Southeast, which also includes Alabama.

‘They want to go further’

Supporters of reproductive rights spent this last week honoring what would have been the 52nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, which was overturned in 2022.

They also spent the week bracing for news out of Washington as President Donald Trump took office for a second term. Trump was instrumental in ending the federal right to an abortion but said during last year’s election that he considers the issue settled after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision put the responsibility of regulating abortion in the hands of state lawmakers. 

Last week, the Trump administration took down a government website highlighting resources on reproductive rights. Trump spoke through a video message at Friday’s national March for Life event but has not outlined specific plans on abortion access for his second term. 

But advocates for abortion rights are bracing for what they fear is to come.

“They want to go further. We know that they want abortion to be unattainable and unthinkable. Those are their words,” Alexis McGill Johnson, president of the national Planned Parenthood, said at an Atlanta fundraiser Thursday called “Roses for Roe.”

“We want abortion to be undeniable, unquestionable, and we want our bodies to be ungovernable,” she said.

Johnson told reporters that she is concerned about what Trump might attempt to do through executive action, such as using the Comstock Act to restrict access to medication abortion.  

“I think the president understands that abortion bans, national abortion bans are unpopular, and he does not like to be unpopular,” she said. 

Fight over medication abortion in Georgia is at a simmer, for now

Bartlett with the Georgia Life Alliance said Friday that her organization’s focus this year is on reviving a proposal that would require medical providers to conduct an in-person exam before prescribing abortion bills. 

Such a bill cleared the state Senate in early 2022 but ultimately stalled. Since then, Georgia’s six-week abortion ban has taken effect, and Republican lawmakers have not entertained additional restrictions on abortion while that law is being tested in court. A challenge is pending before the Georgia Supreme Court now. 

The debate over whether Georgia’s law caused the deaths of two Georgia women while attempting to terminate their pregnancy has also energized both sides of the issue since the Legislature was last in session.

Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller died after trying to have an abortion shortly after Georgia’s law took effect in 2022 but their stories become public in September. Both women experienced a complication from abortion medication. 

Bartlett pointed to their deaths as a reason to revisit the 2022 proposal. She argued that access to medication abortion has become the “wild west,” pointing to federal changes designed to ease access. 

“If it had been in place, those two women would be alive today in my estimation,” Bartlett said of the stalled bill.

But advocates for abortion access have blamed the women’s deaths on Georgia’s six-week ban. In Thurman’s case, doctors waited 20 hours to perform a dilation and curettage to treat sepsis that resulted from an incomplete abortion. 

Georgia’s law allows for an abortion to be performed when there is a “medical emergency,” but representatives of the medical community have cautioned for years that the law’s wording is unclear and would cause doctors to delay care until the patient is in an obvious crisis.

Thurman’s mother, Shanette Williams, has joined advocates in calling for the repeal of strict abortion laws like Georgia’s. She participated in a virtual press conference just last week in recognition of the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, saying she is speaking up to “help save another life.” 

Another Georgia woman, Avery Davis Bell, says she nearly lost her life after experiencing a second-trimester miscarriage late last year but said her doctors waited to intervene to perform a dilation and evacuation until her own health started to fail. 

Bell immediately began to publicly share her story and was a featured speaker at Planned Parenthood’s fundraiser in Atlanta last week.

Bell said she wants people to hear her story because if someone in her circumstances – a white, cis, straight, married geneticist with a strong support system and care team – could go through what she went through, then it could happen to anyone and with “worse results.”

“May the memories of Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller be a blessing and a battle cry,” Bell said. 

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com.