VP Harris meets privately with Alabama IVF patient in wake of state court ruling
Vice President Kamala Harris met privately at the White House this week with an Alabama woman directly affected by the state Supreme Court's ruling that found frozen embryos to be considered children.
Abbey Crain has been undergoing IVF treatments for nearly two years and was preparing to transfer the frozen embryos when the court's decision was announced.
She traveled to the White House on Thursday to meet with Harris, describing the anger she felt after the ruling.
"This is literally, literally taking away my freedom to become a parent," Crain told Harris, according to a video of the meeting reviewed by ABC News.
"I know that any person who has waited just one month to get pregnant, they know that feeling -- it's agonizing. It's grief. It is all encompassing and it rules your life," Crain added.
Harris, who recently embarked on a nationwide tour to promote reproductive freedom, said, "the idea that these, mostly men, sitting in these state capitols have decided that it is their right to tell you what is in your best interest about your body and your life. To not understand how much hope, and hard work and physical emotional pain and rollercoasters someone goes through."
More than a year ago, Harris warned that the U.S. Supreme Court's overruling of its Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion access nationwide could open the door to more sweeping restrictions on contraception and in vitro fertilization.
The Alabama court ruling has sparked a national conversation around access to IVF. Within days of the decision, roughly half of IVF clinics in Alabama paused treatment out of fear they could face wrongful death lawsuits or criminal charges for discarding unused embryos, which is a routine part of the process.
In the wake of the ruling, Harris was the administration's lead voice in opposing the decision, calling it "shocking" but "not surprising."
"What we have seen in Alabama is, sure enough, it has now been attacked and the access to reproductive health care through IVF is being taken from countless individuals and families, and this is about an individual's right, but it also affects entire families," she said while visiting Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Several days after the state Supreme Court ruling, the Alabama legislature passed legislation to restore access to in vitro fertilization. The bill provides civil and criminal immunity "for death or damage" to an embryo as part of IVF services. But even if clinics resume treatments, the move comes too late for a number of patients who were scheduled to undergo embryo transfers and had their appointments canceled.
Harris' meeting comes as President Joe Biden is expected to highlight his administration's efforts to protect abortion access and women's health care services during his State of the Union address next Thursday.
The president has invited Kate Cox, the 31-year-old Texas woman who was denied an emergency abortion by the state's Supreme Court, to be his guest at the speech.
Biden will discuss "saving our democracy, protecting women's reproductive health – rights and freedom are on the ballot," a White House official told ABC News.
