Global Infertility In "Western" Nations On The Rise, Alabama Ruling Threatens In Vitro Fertilization!

Africa, the world's second most populous continent, is set for a demographic boom of unprecedented scale. Its population will double in just 35 years to 2.4 billion in 2050, and is projected to eventually hit 4.2 billion by 2100.

Many couples "especially" in Europe and the USA fear expanding of an Alabama ruling on embryos could threaten future pregnancies! But How Does Climate Change Fit In?

A court decision is prompting some Alabama fertility clinics to curtail IVF treatments. A recent state Supreme Court decision that was expected to curtail abortion and raise the birthrate for dwindling populations in threatened demographics by declaring "embryos are children and those who destroy them can be held liable for wrongful death" is having the opposite effect.

The irony is that US Supreme Court ending the nationwide federal right to an abortion in 2022 has also had the opposite effect than as expected. Within a month of the decision, in July 2022, a TIME survey found that 21% of respondents reported changing their method of birth control after Roe was overturned. CNN reported a 300% increase in demand for emergency contraception from the online pharmaceutical company Nurx in a matter of weeks. Just as climate change is having a heavier impact on women of color, ending protections of reproductive rights will also have greater impact on women of color.

LARC is the acronym for long-acting reversible contraceptives, birth control methods that once inserted, work for extended periods of time and are highly effective in preventing pregnancy. In the United States, there are two types of LARCs: IUDs and implants. Combining LARCs with a barrier method like an internal condom or external condom is the best way to protect yourself against an unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection. Though LARCs are not currently the leading birth control choice among women, the use of IUDs in particular has been on the rise in recent years because of the rulings going on across the nation that focus on births instead of providing care for children after they are born in an economy where both parents may have to work and especially in the black community where that is the rule rather than the exception.

With regard to climate change impacts on Black maternal health, a 2021a study found that for every 10° increase in seasonal summer temperature in California, there is an average increase in preterm delivery of 10%, but for Black women that increase is 14%.In today’s conservative media and political ecosystems, white men are fed a steady diet of fear that they are being “replaced” due to low birth rates and incoming black and brown migrants and must “take their country back.” One of the tenants of replacement theory is the fear over white women not having enough babies. The patriarchal traditionalists of the right blame this in part on feminism, for letting such women believe they have the right to earn their own careers rather than just be white, Christian baby-making machines at their men’s disposal.

So telling them that the real threat comes from the Petro pharmaceutical industries that provide you with fentanyl, frankenfoods, hidden lab meat at fast food restaurants,and and diesel fuel for the truckers and oppose solar power, free health care, daycare and pre and post natal care, maternity leave, live-able wages, affordable housing, and especially taxing corporations and removing subsidies for trillion and billion dollar corporations in order that they pay their fair share, well that sounds too much like common sense! Meanwhile, the available data points to year-after-year steady increase in the number of IVF cycles and that trend has continued into 2024. In the USA and UK, the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) of the United Kingdom reported that 55,000 women in the UK alone had around 76,000 fresh and frozen embryo transfer IVF cycles in 2021, an increase of 2000 individuals compared to 2019. The UK IVF market was valued at $514 million in 2019 and is estimated to reach $928 million to $1 billion by 2026,