Americans of all ages and political persuasions have supported IVF in an exclusive DailyMail.com poll – despite the Alabama Supreme Court’s controversial ruling last month.
Overall, 60 percent said the treatment should remain legal, while just 12 percent said it should be illegal, according to our survey of 1,000 voters.
Meanwhile, 27 percent said they didn’t know.
The groups with the smallest majority are in favor test tube fertilization (IVF) were blacks and Latinos, people ages 18 to 29, and Republicans.
In contrast, the strongest support was among those over 65, whites, college graduates and Democratic voters.
The results come after fertility treatment was thrust into the spotlight last month when an Alabama court ruled that frozen embryos have the same rights as children.
While the Alabama ruling did not directly restrict IVF, it could open the door to wrongful death lawsuits over embryos that are discarded.
JL Partners conducted the survey earlier this month on behalf of DailyMail.com. It included a sample of 1,005 likely voters aged 18 and over, collected online.
We asked, “Do you think IVF treatment should be legal or illegal in the United States?”
Women were more likely than men to be in favor of IVF, with 64 percent saying it should be legal, compared to 56 percent of men.
A similar proportion of men and women (13 and 12 percent respectively) believe this should be illegal.
Among age groups, Americans ages 18 to 29 were the least likely to support fertility treatment, with less than half (48 percent) believing it should be legal.
Respondents aged 30 and over all agreed that IVF should be allowed by law, with around 62 percent of every other age group saying this.
University graduates were more likely to support legalization than non-graduates: 71 percent compared to 53 percent.
Additionally, two-thirds of white Americans believe IVF should be legal, but less than half of Hispanic and black people (49 percent and 48 percent, respectively) said the same.
Among political parties, nearly half of Republicans, 48 percent, support fertility treatment, compared to 68 percent of Democrats and 65 percent of independent voters.
Although successful and performed since the 1980s, IVF has become controversial in recent times as debates over abortion and when life begins become more contentious.
The highlighted states have laws on the books that stipulate that life begins at the moment of fertilization. In Louisiana, the intentional removal or destruction of a human embryo is illegal
When someone tries to conceive, multiple embryos are typically created, frozen and stored, and the most viable embryo is ultimately implanted.
However, not every embryo created can be implanted and result in a live birth, either because it is not healthy enough or because someone decides they no longer want to use their embryos.
In some of these cases they will be thrown away.
But now that Alabama’s ruling has classified the specimens as humans, those who oppose abortion and argue that life begins at the moment of fertilization say the destruction of embryos should be illegal and treated as a crime.
And with the threat of prosecution looming, there are fears that doctors will stop performing IVF, severely limiting access to the treatment and making it almost impossible for some people to have children.
Although Alabama’s Republican Governor Kay Ivey recently signed a bill that would protect IVF practitioners.
The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit filed by a group of IVF patients whose frozen embryos were destroyed in December 2020 when someone removed them from a cryogenic storage unit and dropped them on the floor.
One judge quoted the Bible in his ruling, saying it would protect “the sanctity of unborn life.”
The ruling stated, “The law of wrongful death of a minor applies to all unborn children regardless of their location,” including “unborn children who are outside a biological womb at the time they are killed.”
For people who have difficulty conceiving due to age or health problems, those who want to have a child without a partner, or same-sex couples, IVF is a common form of assisted reproductive technology (ART), treating more than 99 percent of all ART procedures. executed.
The Department of Health and Human Services reports that approximately nine percent of married women and nine percent of men experience some form of infertility.
As a result, an estimated one in eight women will have received some form of fertility support during their lifetime.
According to the most recent data available, 86,140 children born in the US in 2021 – 2.3 percent – were conceived through the use of ART.
