IVF Patients, Doctors Navigate Fetal Personhood Laws’ Unknowns

In the summer of 2022, Allison Mertzman and her wife, Leanne, asked their fertility clinic to destroy their embryos. The married couple were living in California but storing their nine embryos for $3,000 per year at the clinic in Michigan, where Mertzman had resided before. After having two daughters through in vitro fertilization, the couple had decided they wanted more children. But Mertzman was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2021, and the women were waiting for a better time for implantation. Then, in June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion triggered laws in several states establishing “fetal personhood,” or legal rights for embryos beginning at fertilization. The couple wondered: If their frozen embryos were damaged while being moved across states with personhood laws, perhaps because of failed temperature controls, what would the legal ramifications be? For the then-37-year-old Mertzman and her wife, state abortion and fetal personhood laws had a chilling effect: They chose not to take the risk. “I was strong-armed into destroying my embryos,” Mertzman said. “I wasn’t ready to implant them for multiple reasons, but o...