Am I a Murderer? It May Be Up to Donald Trump | Opinion

When I was diagnosed with colon cancer at age 34, all I wanted was to be a mom.

Now, a recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling means that the decisions I made to preserve my fertility pre-chemo could have made me a criminal.

After the 2022 Dobbs decision effectively ended a national right to abortion—thanks to former President Donald Trump's three Supreme Court nominees—conservatives played down threats to reproductive options like IVF as overstated scare tactics.

But Alabama's recent ruling found that frozen IVF embryos are "extrauterine children," meaning that anyone who destroys those embryos can be held liable for wrongful death.

And in less than a week, IVF providers in the state paused their services, and providers around the country—especially in conservative states—are concerned about what's to come.

Hearing about the Alabama ruling, I flashed back to the moment when I received my cancer diagnosis. The doctors told me that chemotherapy could destroy my cancer, but it could also end my chances of becoming a parent. The only way to ensure that I'd have a chance at motherhood post cancer was to undergo the first stages of fertility treatment: Egg retrieval, fertilization, and embryo preservation.

Two years later, my prognosis was strong, and while my partner and I didn't know whether I'd be able to conceive—we decided to "practice." We conceived naturally and were elated.

Fast forward another six years and one more child, and our family felt complete. We then faced the decision of what to do with the 2 embryos we'd frozen before cancer treatment.

We debated whether we should donate them to other couples who wanted children, but we couldn't. We knew that the tiny, 100-cell blastocysts, if successfully implanted, would be shaped and nurtured into a new human, but ultimately, that person would still be of us. We couldn't fathom having a piece of ourselves out in the world whom we couldn't care for and tend to as our own.

Like thousands of other families, we decided to dispose of the embryos. But now, according to Alabama, the choice to dispose of our own genetic material could be considered wrongful death.

Perhaps you are thinking the Alabama ruling doesn't affect you—you (or your partner) don't live in Alabama; you're not one of the roughly 15 percent of people who have trouble conceiving. Maybe you already have children or don't ever want them.

But as it did for me, the Alabama decision should shake you. This is not an edge case in a Southern state; this is part of a concerted conservative plan to restrict and remove reproductive freedom nationwide.

And even as that plan marches forward, the media is not holding its chief champion—former President Donald Trump—accountable for his role in enabling the restrictions that have already taken hold and the new ones to come if he wins a second term.

Late last week, as alarm grew around the potential national implications of Alabama's IVF decision, Trump skated away from accountability as he proclaimed his strong support for the availability of IVF. As is often the case, Trump wants to have it both ways: He supports states rights, and he supports IVF. The media headlines affirmed Trump's new commitment to IVF, while failing to provide the analysis that Trump's support of states' rights is exactly why IVF is now under threat.

The media continues to fall for the same tactics Trump has always used to dodge responsibility for his most troubling positions. Trump says what he means but backtracks when his extreme views generate pushback. Then, the media gives him a pass rather than holding him accountable.

Recently, the Biden campaign was under attack for developing an ad that shows Trump saying women need to face "some kind of punishment" for violating abortion bans. When Trump first made that threat in 2016 and faced blowback, his campaign quickly issued a retraction. Now, the Biden campaign has been criticized as misleading for using the clips "out of context."

But what is the "context"? Trump's record speaks for itself, even as he brags about his role in ending Roe. And Trump's view that women should be punished for abortions was prescient. The undeniable outcome of Roe's fall has been women being "pushed to death's door" and tens of thousands of rape victims becoming pregnant in states with abortion bans. The cruelty of the punishment is shocking.

And what of the context for this coming election? Trump has been privately putting forward plans for a national abortion ban, while claiming he doesn't want to talk about it until after the primaries. The media has yet to pin down Trump on this critical election issue, even as he claims he'll work with "both sides" to make a deal that "everyone will be happy with."

It's no wonder that a recent poll found that only 32 percent of Republican voters and 46 percent of independents believe that Donald Trump will try to enact a national abortion ban should he win in 2024. Despite Trump's actions in his last term, he's continued to obfuscate his position as he courts eve-important female votes.

But Trump is without a doubt committed to a path of ending reproductive freedom. He may not be the author of the Alabama court's bizarre, Orwellian language about "extrauterine children" in "cryogenic nurseries," but another Trump administration is clearly on track to fundamentally limit reproductive freedom as we know it.

The best path to stopping a new wave of reproductive restrictions is to hold Trump accountable for his track record. The growing momentum to criminalize families' choices around fertility—as we saw last week in Alabama—is a crimson tide we can't afford to let roll.

Bethany Robertson is a co-founder and board member of ParentsTogether Action, a national parent advocacy group with more than 3 million members nationwide.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.