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IVF is popular — and imperiled

The fertility treatment that gives people hope, explained in a comic.

by Aubrey Hirsch
Illustration of a human egg being fertilized for IVF.
Illustration of a human egg being fertilized for IVF.
The text reads: The letters “IVF” stand for in vitro fertilization, meaning that an egg is fertilized “in glass,” outside the human body. The image shows an egg and sperm in a petri dish.
The text reads: But the IVF process is actually a complicated series of procedures developed to give a person the best chance of getting pregnant. The image shows the steps of IVF depicted as a board game.
The text reads: In a natural menstrual cycle, the body matures and releases a single egg for possible fertilization. In an IVF cycle, daily injections of hormones stimulate the body to mature multiple eggs at once. The image shows an ovary filled with eggs at the top and IVF syringes at the bottom.
The text reads: Any mature eggs retrieved via IVF will be exposed to or injected with sperm in the hope that they will fertilize and begin to divide. The resulting blastocysts can either be transferred to a uterus in a few days or frozen and stored for transfer later. The image shows a test tube being put into a freezer.
The text reads: An aneuploid embryo implanted in a uterus is much likelier to end in a miscarriage and almost never produces a healthy baby, exposing the pregnant person to greater risk and stealing precious time from people at an advanced maternal age. The images shows a woman with a pink and blue miscarriage awareness ribbon on her abdomen.
The text reads: When Louise Brown, the first IVF baby, was born in 1978, people viewed the new technology with suspicion. The image shows a baby in a test tube, surrounded by various speech bubbles that read: “Who would want a test tube baby?” “Scientists shouldn’t play God.” “It isn’t natural.”
The text reads: But its popularity has grown over time. IVF is used by people experiencing infertility for lots of reasons. It’s also frequently used by fertile people in same-sex partnerships, intended single parents, or by people wanting to screen embryos for genetic conditions. The image depicts people in these categories.
The text reads: Now that Americans are having children later in life and families have become more diverse, IVF babies in the US currently account for 2 percent of births. The image shows 100 small babies, two of which are colored in to indicate this statistic.
The text reads: People’s attitudes toward IVF have remained consistently and overwhelmingly positive over the last decade. The image shows a bar graph with percentage of the population that thinks IVF is not a moral issue (around 45 percent in 2013 and 40 percent in 2024), morally acceptable (around 33 percent in 2013 and 30 percent in 2024), and morally wrong (around 13 percent in 2013 and 9 percent in 2024).
The text reads: And a vast majority of Americans agree that IVF should be legal. The image shows a pie chart styled as an egg, surrounded by sperm; the chart shows the statistic is 86 percent.
The text reads: IVF is a numbers game. There is considerable attrition in every step of the process. The more eggs, embryos, blastocysts, and euploids you amass, the more likely you are to bring home a baby at the end of it all. The image depicts a dwindling number of viable entities with each stage, from eggs collected to mature eggs to fertilized eggs to blastocysts.
The text reads: Because IVF often involves the destruction of low-quality embryos and embryos that are left over when a patient completes their family, the same conservative and religious groups chipping away at other reproductive freedoms are attacking IVF. The image shows a women walking a test tube in a stroller and saying, “This is a child!”
The text reads: The overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 was a huge win for this small but vocal faction, and it opened the door for states to pass laws that grant “personhood” to fertilized eggs. The image shows a test tube in baby onesie and a speech bubble that reads, “He’ll grow into it!”
The text reads: A recent ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court that frozen embryos should be considered “extrauterine children” caused almost half of Alabama’s IVF clinics to pause procedures, leaving families devastated, their embryos in limbo. The image shows a couple outside of a fertility clinic that’s covered in police tape.
The text reads: A bill to protect IVF in Alabama is currently making its way through the state legislature, to the relief of Alabamans experiencing infertility. But another bill that would have protected IVF nationwide was blocked by Republicans in the Senate. The image depicts the writing and stamping out of a bill.
The text reads: Without federal protection for reproductive freedom, access to IVF will become a state-by-state issue. The image shows a map of the United States with question marks on top of it.
The text reads: IVF isn’t successful for everyone, and undergoing the physically and emotionally taxing process doesn’t guarantee a baby. The image shows a woman looking at shelves of teddy bears wearing rainbow scarves.
The text reads: But IVF does mean hope for the tens of thousands of people who turn to it every year. Hope that cannot exist without it. The image shows the same woman from the previous panel smiling and holding one of the teddy bears.
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