Amanda Stirone Mansfield, J.D.

This paper examines the present status of in vitro fertilization laws, regulations, and guidelines in a sampling of countries. While countries like Italy, Germany, and Poland have regulated IVF in a way that attempts to protect human life in its earliest stages, the United States has virtually no IVF regulations regarding the treatment of human embryos, allowing for the creation, destruction, and indefinite freezing of countless embryonic human beings.

A legal analysis of states' current laws, statutes, and opinions demonstrates that women will not be prosecuted in their state for seeking or obtaining abortion.

On the verge of the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization over the constitutionality of Mississippi’s 15-week abortion limitations, which could result in the dismantling of Roe v. Wade, there has been a steady drumbeat by the abortion industry forecasting catastrophe for mothers across the nation.

Since January 2010, twenty-three states have enacted statutes prohibiting abortion at 20 weeks of pregnancy. All but one of these laws make at least some explicit reference to fetal pain in either the legislative title, legislative findings, statement of legislative purpose or intent, or some combination of these elements. Evidence shows that unborn children can feel pain by 20 weeks, or five months, of pregnancy and even earlier.

Since January 2010, twenty-one states have enacted statutes prohibiting abortion at 20 weeks of pregnancy, roughly five months or more than halfway through pregnancy. All but one of these laws make at least some explicit reference to fetal pain in either the title, findings, statement of purpose or intent, definitions, substantive provisions, or some combination of these legislative elements.

In this paper, Associate Scholar Amanda Stirone reviews statutes in 19 states regulating the practice of telemedicine abortion, then reviews litigation involving those regulations.