My husband and I started trying to have children when I was 33.

I was older than some first-time moms I knew, but I was also younger than plenty others. My husband and I were both healthy, and there was no reason to suspect we’d have trouble conceiving. In fact, I was so confident of our success that for my birthday that first year, I asked for gift cards to get baby items.

Even if it takes a few months to get pregnant, I thought, they’ll be handy for diapers.

But it would be almost seven years before I would hold my first child in my arms.

I spent the interim years traveling a hellish landscape of doctors and injections, hormones, IVF and, most heartbreakingly, multiple miscarriages. I emerged scarred but ultimately the parent of two wonderful boys, children I most certainly would not have were it not for advanced fertility treatments.

I say all this in acknowledgement of the fact that I cannot be unbiased when it comes to the GOP’s attempts to target IVF, specifically, and more broadly, women’s rights to control their own reproduction in general. But it’s because of that bias that I feel compelled to speak out about the primacy of reproductive rights and to tell those who might take it for granted how valuable procedures like IVF are.

Now, there is no right to give birth. God knows there are plenty of women who deserve it, want it and do everything they can to achieve it, only to be thwarted. But the ability to make your own decisions about reproduction — what to try, when and if to start and stop, which treatments to pursue — that, I believe, is fundamental.

Defenders of abortion rights were told we were hysterical and paranoid for believing that restrictions would lead to the anti-abortion movement turning on IVF, surrogacy and even birth control.

But it turns out we were right, as personhood laws in Alabama have rendered IVF virtually impossible and the conservative Heritage Foundation has begun discussing restricting IVF and banning related procedures like genetic testing. They’ve announced a full-court press on the topic, trying to persuade evangelical leaders to come out against the practice.

“Many of these pro-life Republicans are going to have to think more deeply about what it means to be pro-life,” Emma Waters, a senior research associate at the Heritage Foundation who wrote a report calling IVF in the U.S. tantamount to “eugenics,” told Politico.

It’s important to understand that in IVF, we’re discussing embryos that are less than a week old. The strategies Republicans typically use — talking about fetal heartbeats and eyelashes and fingernails — won’t work with embryos, which are literally a microscopic cluster of undifferentiated cells.

Now, they’re more than just random cells, as evidenced by the specific, almost magical circumstances required to turn them into a human child. Their potential is tremendous, as any woman who has done IVF will tell you. But as she will also tell you, five-day embryos are a long way from becoming a living baby.

Treating them as if they were identical is not simply silly. It’s dangerous. It’s like when my son, who’d prefer to avoid all cruciferous vegetables, says the broccoli on his plate is just as alive as his aunt’s pet dog. Yes, son, they’re both alive. No, son, they’re not the same.

In IVF, it is the parent — the woman, in almost every sense — who undergoes treatment. She rides hormonal waves. She recovers from procedures. She miscarries. She gives birth. It is she who bloats and spasms and bleeds. Perhaps, one day, the embryo will bleed and cry and hurt, too, but it is capable of none of those things until she gives it that opportunity.

Women do not create life, but they are a necessary conduit for its creation. And it is impossible — offensive, even — to suggest that a woman’s will should be removed from the equation of reproduction. The government doesn’t and shouldn’t have decision-making power over parenthood.

It’s likely I’m preaching to the choir here, if we can trust polls showing massive public support for IVF. But Republicans have built massive fundraising and lobbying organs to fight abortion rights, organs that have nothing to do now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned. They’re like hammers with no more nails to strike.

My fear, and the fear of every woman who kisses goodnight a child born through IVF, is that IVF is that next nail. So, I’ll continue to talk about the importance of IVF, even if I’m called paranoid or hysterical.

Because right now, I can only imagine the world without IVF. And I’d like to keep it that way.

To learn more about Georgia Garvey, visit GeorgiaGarvey.com.

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