The Patient Response to Anti-Family Policies

Barbara Collura, Lee Rubin Collins

ABSTRACT

RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association was founded in 1974 to provide support and information for women and men living with infertility. RESOLVE has worked to increase access to care beginning with insurance coverage for infertility and more recently in fighting anti-family legislation in many state legislatures. Beginning with the Personhood ballot initiative in Colorado in 2008, RESOLVE and its grassroots advocates have been called into action to fight legislative attempts to restrict access to all family-building options, specifically in vitro fertilization. Personhood bills and ballot initiatives would severely restrict access to infertility medical treatments and prevent physicians from practicing medicine to the standard of care patients deserve. Personhood defines a fertilized egg as a person and grants full rights of "personhood" to a microscopic embryo. In addition to a growth in Personhood bills and ballot initiatives since 2008, RESOLVE has also had to fight other anti-family bills that would impose state government oversight and burdensome regulations on the practice of medicine for people with infertility. The most successful medical treatments available for people with infertility are under attack.