They don’t want want this miracle™ to exist

As the pandemic began, IVF gave me a chance to become a human.

It was four years ago today. After about 34 hours inside Ann Arbor’s St. Joseph Mercy Hospital and a lifetime of heroic pushing by my wife, my daughter was born. She, like every newborn, was a miracle™. That’s the cliche™. 

The Miracle of Life is the 1983 movie that made real the miracle of childbirth, the camera staring at the birth canal for what feels like it should be an unconstitutional period of time. The film employs the educational methodology of shock. For decades, high school students have been scared straight by the flesh and the fluids and the freaky fascination of seeing something so tiny yet so alive emerge from all that ooze. 

What kid could disrespect a parent after seeing that? Who could have sex?

But our Winnie was a miracle™. That’s undeniable. And she’s become more of a miracle every day of her life, which is a feat. 

Consider that she sat frozen inside the Assisted Reproductive Technologies Laboratory at the University of Michigan Center for Reproductive Medicine for at least four years. An “undetermined” genetic test suggested her embryo – our last one – had a low probability of survival. We were looking for better odds. Countless tries resulted in countless failures plus two miscarriages that felt like a million. This microscopic cryopreserved oocyte was a last chance, and that was basically no chance at all. “Maybe try it after you’ve had a child,” one doctor told us. More donor eggs or adoption were in our future. So what would we have to lose? Hope?

Somehow, Winnie emerged (gradually, then suddenly) into a world that was shutting down like an old Mac. A world so improbable that QR codes even became useful. 

We had the money and space that we needed, which made us far luckier than most of the miracles on earth. And we stayed inside, hoping for more miracles.

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Are we better off than four years ago? 

Well, Winnie sleeps through most nights now. And so do we. 

Somehow, I got enough therapy fast enough to both save my marriage, inshallah, and also to accept a lesson that’s a miracle nearly on par with Winnie. I’ve learned how to find delight in my child. It’s not just the privilege of well-raised dads. It’s my job. A job I love to flounder at.

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Are we, as a society, better off now than we were during the worst collective terror that most Americans have ever experienced? 

That question is almost a sign tapping itself, screaming, “Of course, we are, you sick bastards.” But in at least one way we are worse off than anyone in this country has been in 50 years.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg died almost exactly six months after Winnie was born. Just over a month later, Amy Comey Barrett replaced her on the Supreme Court. Less than two years later Dobbs v. Jackson stole from Winnie the presumption that she will be able to make decisions about her own body and gave that right to a bunch of gadflies who see pregnant bodies as pawns in a never-ending thumbwar of domination. And I don’t think society has begun to combobulate what it means to lose a fundamental right we had for nearly a half century.

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Just this week, Eva Burch went to the floor of the Arizona State Senate to speak about how the state’s abortion restrictions made an already unfathomable moment far worse.

The first-term State Senator, who is also an emergency room nurse and nurse practitioner, explained how her (relatable) “rough journey with fertility” was leading her to (relatably) abort a non-viable pregnancy for a second time.

She explained how state law forced her to endure – without her consent – a transvaginal probe for an ultrasound immediately followed by “an exhaustive list of absolute disinformation” about the abortion she was already heartbroken she had to have.

“From where I sat, the only reason I had to hear those things was a cruel and really uninformed attempt by outside forces to shame and coerce and frighten me into making a different decision other than the one that I knew was right for me,” she said.

My fury when hearing those words can only be contained by words. I will tell you that if you forced my wife to go through that, I would instantly overcome my opposition to the death penalty.

Senator Burch’s bravery should not be necessary. Yet telling these stories right now is essential and the reward for doing so is likely a torrent of threats and menace from people who’ve convinced themself their murderous hate is a concern for life. 

Meanwhile, telling the story of our IVF miracle is one of the greatest joys of my life. On the day Winnie was born, I got one of the nurses in trouble because I wouldn’t shut up about it. 

And because I’m a dad, and an especially old and goofy dad, I’ll likely receive far more “Awws!” than I deserve. I’ve already lucked out more than I could ever convey, and any credit that goes to me is little more than stolen valor from a miracle in pigtails.

Still, many of the same people in this country determined to force birth are also determined to punish any pregnant person not giving birth (even those who want to but can’t). They’re determined to lock us into our own states and our own bodies with laws they would never force anyone they love to follow. And they also want to ban the miracle of IVF, or at least make it impossible to practice.

They are doing this under the premise that every embryo is sacred; if sperm meets egg, they say, all other considerations of anyone else’s humanity evaporate. 

This is a useful lie of the sort that fundamentalists love – its only value is as a weapon.

No one turns themselves into the police every time menstruation happens. No one actually believes the millions of embryos in clinics around the nation must be liberated. No one suggests the company that lost fertilized eggs from 20,000 patients recently should be prosecuted for war crimes. Instead, they save their ire and legislation for people like Senator Burch, people they imagine need their instruction.

When Alabama’s Supreme Court banned IVF in February and the country noticed, mainstream Republicans recognized they’d be exposed for the meddling villains they are. They almost immediately passed a law that “protected” IVF. 

But their fellow Republicans will not surrender the sword of “every embryo is sacred.” 

“Politicians cannot call themselves ‘pro-life,’ affirm the truth that human life begins at the moment of fertilization, and then enact laws that allow the callous killing of these preborn children simply because they were created through IVF,” said Lila Rose, president of Live Action, a far right, anti-abortion group.

And this week, the Republican Study Committee, which represents a majority of the House majority, issued a budget calling for the passage of the “Life at Conception Act,” which would inevitably lead to the end of IVF.

Anyone who has struggled with fertility knows it’s a lottery. It’s all science yet all random. Anyone attempting to make meaning of whether IVF works or not is pretending to be either G-d or the devil. 

Again, no one actually believes life begins at conception. They just say they do because it’s the only way to make sense of a fascist approach to reproduction. There has to be some point where the pregnant bodies become wards of the state. 

For the far right, that has to be as soon as humanly possible, before anyone could possibly be sure that they are pregnant. For Roe, it was at “viability,” which is still cruel. All of this is just a massive lie to justify a political project of domination by people who happily deprive the babies they’ve forced into the world of sustenance, care, and comfort. You must come into the world, but you’d better pull yourself up by your baby bootstraps when you’re here. 

And they just cut the baby bootstrap tax credit.

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I came across a heading that radicalized me against any law that takes any choice about a pregnancy out of the hands of a doctor and a patient more than a decade ago, when Republicans were melting down about the birth control benefits in Obamacare: “Abortion more common where it's illegal.” How could it not be?

The guys who ban abortion are the same guys who ban anything that prevents abortions. And they’re the same guys who ban or prevent almost anything that makes life worthwhile for those they force into the world. To say it’s about controlling women is almost too easy. 

More and more, I think it’s about taking delight in punishing groups you hate rather than in the miracle of life itself. The torture forced on pregnant people is like any torture, purposeless except for the pleasure of the torturer and those who perpetuate a system that normalizes abuse. 

And we see this again as abortion bans in 25 states made possible by Dobbs has produced an inevitable result: the most abortions in more than a decade. 

Will this fact change the mind of anyone who has convinced themselves that their concern for “life” makes them the moral betters of the rest of us? Shouldn’t they be sweeping into action to prevent the outcome – the murders! – they say they oppose most? Shouldn’t they be trying to pass parental leave in at least one of the 25 states that have banned abortion? Of course not. They’ll do nothing but pass more bans that will lead to more, and more dangerous, abortions.

The minority that seeks to control us exists to fixate the imagined sins of others, not their own failings. And that’s the most relatable thing about them. 

Who doesn’t fall into that trap, at least occasionally? The alternative can be just too miserable. Who wants to recognize we are only human when we care for others? That requires accepting all the pain that comes from allowing people to have their own needs, their own miracles. 

If we do that, “life” becomes a responsibility, not a punishment. And what fun is that?

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