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    ‘I Was a Childless Cat Lady’: Women Respond to JD Vance

    More from our inbox:Clearing Homeless EncampmentsFood and Gas PricesThe Roger Maris FireThe selection of Senator JD Vance of Ohio as former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate was supposed to appeal to women, voters of color and blue-collar voters, but a stream of years-old comments has threatened to undermine that.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Past Comments Fluster Vance as Democrats Go on Offense” (front page, July 29):JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, said in 2021, “We’re effectively run, in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”I would say this to Mr. Vance:I was a childless cat lady: three cats, no kids.I thought fertility was a given. There was no medical reason I couldn’t have children. Yet it did not happen. Three cats. A great career. No kids.I was, in effect at 38, a “childless cat lady.”I pursued fertility treatments. Treatments that many Republicans want to ban.I had painful tests, surgeries, running to the lab — five vials of blood drawn every day at 6 a.m. — then rushing to work for a minimum 12-hour day.Childless cat lady lawyer. Meow.I had one fabulous child at 38 with I.V.F. She was a triplet, but I lost my daughter’s siblings.I was pregnant three other times. I lost two other babies at four months. I needed a D and C: same procedure as an abortion. If I didn’t have the surgery, I would have died.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Fewer U.S. Adults Say They Will Have Children, Study Finds

    A new study breaks down the reasons more U.S. adults say they are unlikely to have children.When Jurnee McKay, 25, imagines having children, a series of scary scenarios pop into her mind: the “horrors” of childbirth, risks associated with pregnancy, a flighty potential partner, exorbitant child care costs.Abortion care restrictions are also on her list of fears. So Ms. McKay, a nursing student in Orlando, decided to eliminate the possibility of an accidental pregnancy. But the first doctor she consulted refused to remove her fallopian tubes, she said, insisting that she might change her mind after meeting her “soul mate.”“For some reason,” she said, “society looks at women who choose not to make life harder for themselves as crazy.”Next week, she will speak with another doctor about sterilization.Like Ms. McKay, a growing number of U.S. adults say they are unlikely to raise children, according to a study released on Thursday by the Pew Research Center. When the survey was conducted in 2023, 47 percent of those younger than 50 without children said they were unlikely ever to have children, an increase of 10 percentage points since 2018.When asked why kids were not in their future, 57 percent said they simply didn’t want to have them. Women were more likely to respond this way than men (64 percent vs. 50 percent). Further reasons included the desire to focus on other things, like their career or interests; concerns about the state of the world; worries about the costs involved in raising a child; concerns about the environment, including climate change; and not having found the right partner.The results echo a 2023 Pew study that found that only 26 percent of adults said having children was extremely or very important to live a fulfilling life. The U.S. fertility rate has been falling over the last decade, dipping to about 1.6 births per woman in 2023. This is the lowest number on record, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And it is less than what would be required for the population to replace itself from one generation to the next.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Hospital at Center of Alabama Embryo Ruling Is Ending I.V.F. Services

    The hospital cited a “lack of clarity” in recent state legislation meant to shield I.V.F. providers as a factor in its decision. A separate fertility clinic at the site said it would relocate.A Mobile, Ala., hospital at the center of a State Supreme Court ruling that found that frozen embryos could be considered children said on Wednesday that it would no longer provide in vitro fertilization lab services after this year.In an email explaining the decision, Hannah Peterson, a spokeswoman for the Infirmary Health hospital system, cited “pending litigation and the lack of clarity of the recently passed I.V.F. legislation in the state of Alabama.”It was not immediately clear what effect the decision would have on patients seeking I.V.F. treatment. The fertility clinic that leases space in the hospital and uses its lab services said it would relocate.But the announcement added a new layer to the confusion and apprehension that has hung over patients since the February court ruling, which led the Mobile clinic and others in the state to temporarily suspend I.V.F. treatments.Infirmary Health and the clinic, the Center for Reproductive Medicine, have been embroiled in legal turmoil since three couples sued them over the accidental destruction of their frozen embryos in 2020.The State Supreme Court ruling was a victory for the couples, allowing them to proceed with their wrongful-death claims with the court’s assertion that frozen embryos could legally be considered children. A second lawsuit was filed against both the hospital and the clinic in the weeks after the decision.In the wake of the ruling, Alabama lawmakers scrambled to pass legislation that would shield clinics from criminal or civil liability. The new law does not apply to any embryo-related lawsuits in progress before it was enacted, including the Mobile case.With the suits against it still to be resolved, the hospital said on Wednesday that it would no longer offer I.V.F. treatment services after Dec. 31.The Center for Reproductive Medicine said in a separate statement that it had also resumed treatment and would relocate its work to new facilities in Mobile and Daphne, Ala.The new locations, the center said, would allow it to continue a “mission of helping individuals and couples achieve their dreams of starting or expanding their families.”The hospital’s decision also underscored concerns that the new Alabama law had not gone far enough to adequately protect access to I.V.F. treatments, given that it did not address the question of whether frozen embryos should be considered children. Legal experts warned that the law might face additional constitutional challenges.Doctors, I.V.F. patients and their supporters in Alabama have begun pushing for lawmakers in Washington to codify federal protections for I.V.F. and other fertility treatments.But with a divided Congress and Republicans torn between pledges to protect life starting at conception and defend access to I.V.F., it is unlikely that legislation will move quickly. More

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    A State Court Ruling on I.V.F. Echoes Far Beyond Alabama

    Frozen embryos in test tubes must be considered children, judges ruled. The White House called it a predictable consequence of the overturn of Roe v. Wade.An Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling that frozen embryos in test tubes should be considered children has sent shock waves through the world of reproductive medicine, casting doubt over fertility care for would-be parents in the state and raising complex legal questions with implications extending far beyond Alabama.On Tuesday, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said the ruling would cause “exactly the type of chaos that we expected when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and paved the way for politicians to dictate some of the most personal decisions families can make.”Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One as President Biden traveled to California, Ms. Jean-Pierre reiterated the Biden administration’s call for Congress to codify the protections of Roe v. Wade into federal law.“As a reminder, this is the same state whose attorney general threatened to prosecute people who help women travel out of state to seek the care they need,” she said, referring to Alabama, which began enforcing a total abortion ban in June 2022.The judges issued the ruling on Friday in appeals cases brought by couples whose embryos were destroyed in 2020, when a hospital patient removed frozen embryos from tanks of liquid nitrogen in Mobile and dropped them on the floor.Referencing antiabortion language in the state constitution, the judges’ majority opinion said that an 1872 statute allowing parents to sue over the wrongful death of a minor child applies to unborn children, with no exception for “extrauterine children.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More