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U.S. Terri Sewell, AL-07, yesterday joined House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar and Vice Chair Ted Lieu for a press conference on the Alabama Supreme Court ruling jeopardizing access to fertility treatments like IVF. Rep. Sewell called out Speaker Mike Johnson and House Republicans for cosponsoring federal legislation mirroring the Alabama ruling which would effectively ban IVF treatments nationwide.
CONGRESSWOMAN SEWELL: “I’m Congresswoman Sewell of Alabama’s 7th Congressional District. As the only Democrat in Alabama’s Congressional Delegation and the only woman in Alabama’s House Delegation, I join in expressing my outrage over the recent ruling effectively banning IVF treatments for women who are simply trying to have children.
This decision is alarming and unacceptable, and we are already seeing its chilling effects as clinics cut off fertility treatments in fear of prosecution. On Tuesday, my office hosted HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra for a roundtable discussion in Birmingham, Alabama, to hear directly from Alabama women on how they will be impacted. Many of them have spent years desperately trying to have children, some have devoted their life savings to fertility treatment, only to have their hopes and dreams ripped away by Republican judges on the Alabama Supreme Court.
Patients undergoing IVF already face significant emotional, physical and financial challenges, and this decision will only add to their fears and anxieties. Let me be clear, women in Alabama, and across this nation, deserve access to a full range of reproductive health services, and that includes women who would like to grow their families, but have had difficulty doing so.
Frankly, it is actually unimaginable that in the year 2024 we would be fighting this fight. Surely, reproductive freedom was a battle that my mother’s generation won, but everywhere we look, old battles have become new again as MAGA Extremists work to erode our hard-fought rights and freedoms and roll back our progress. Make no mistake, while some of our colleagues across the aisle are attempting to backtrack the role that Republican officials have played in creating this nightmare, they still own it. Even today, over 60 House Republicans, including Speaker Johnson himself, are currently co-sponsoring legislation that will ban IVF nationwide.
We cannot stand by as politicians work to strip women of their reproductive rights, nor can we accept a world where women today enjoy fewer rights and freedoms than their mothers and their grandmothers. House Democrats are working hard every day to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade into federal law and to protect the reproductive freedom of all women, everywhere.
With that, I want to thank my colleagues for allowing me to go on record about this alarming decision by the Alabama Supreme Court and how this is really owned by MAGA Extremists and by House Republicans.”
Video of the full press conference and Q&A can be viewed here.
