Families

Leading the Charge to Protect IVF, Fenton Creates Media Avalanche

Posted on by Shakirah Taylor

Using the media to educate people, shape opinion, and create impact is Fenton’s superpower. When an extreme state ruling put IVF at risk, we marshaled all our forces to #FightforFamilies. 

RESOLVE, the National Infertility Association, and Fenton’s partner since 2022 has been warning for years that the increasing number and severity of restrictions on reproductive freedom would eventually threaten fertility treatments. On February 16, this potential threat grew to a very real crisis when the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos are considered children and that destroying them amounts to wrongful death. 

Since the news broke over President’s Day Weekend, our team has generated at least 235 unique stories and 6,300 media hits in less than two weeks. This includes 25 hits on CNN, 8 hits on CBS, 8 on ABC (including Good Morning America), 8 hits on NBC (including a TODAY Show appearance), 7 hits in the AP, 6 hits on the BBC, 6 hits on MSNBC, 4 hits on NPR, 3 hits in the New York Times, and 3 hits in the Washington Post. During the first week alone, we published five op-eds. And it’s not over yet – not by a long shot. 

Working around the clock, we saturated print and broadcast with interviews and op-eds from the organization’s leaders, as well as Alabama women who have undergone IVF and fertility doctors who find their practices paralyzed. We kept updating our messages and statements as this issue caught fire and dominated the news for more than 10 days.

“I don’t know how you can be pro-family and tell people that you can’t have a child. I just – I can’t reconcile that. And that’s what you’re doing. You’re telling people in the United States that certain people can have kids and certain people can’t,” RESOLVE’s president and CEO, Barbara Collura said on National Public Radio.

In less than 24 hours, we planned a media event and legislative advocacy day in Montgomery, AL, attended by more than 200 people – and covered by just about every large national media outlet that a communications firm would put on its wish list. The local community told us this was the biggest media event the state capitol has ever seen.

We extended the moment’s reach to digital audiences, engaging the passionate infertility community in a social media takeover from the ground. All of RESOLVE’s channels were flooded with messages of thanks and support, especially on Instagram, as we shared footage from the gathering in-feed and on stories. One Instagram post reached over 6700 likes in under 30 minutes. 

This event landed on the homepage of the New York Times and CNN and was featured prominently in dozens of other national media outlets. The White House invited Collura to a meeting the following day and Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) invited her as his guest to the State of the Union address. The White House and multiple elected officials are using our messaging in their remarks on social media and beyond.

The all-female Fenton RESOLVE team is deeply motivated by their belief that reproductive decisions belong to individuals alone in consultation with their healthcare providers. They spoke to women who had undergone multiple rounds of IVF. They elevated the voices of doctors who described the past two weeks as the most wrenching in their careers – a big statement from doctors who see grief, heartbreak and anguish all the time from people struggling with infertility. And they ensured that it was the stories and messages of these advocates that were always at the center of the narrative. 

More than 46 Democrats in Congress are pushing for national legislation, sponsored by Sen. Duckworth (IL) to protect IVF from potential future court decisions that side with embryos over people pursuing parenthood and their doctors, but Republicans have blocked it. Vice President Kamala Harris responded on X, “How dare they.”

Alabama Republican lawmakers have introduced two bills to protect medical staff, patients and anyone providing IVF goods and services from criminal or civil prosecution. Still, the bills do not go far enough to restore IVF to what it was in Alabama on February 15. 

We are tired, and we’re still angry that the rights and access of would-be family builders were compromised. Reproductive decisions are grounded in health care and are deeply personal to the people who make them every day. But we are thrilled that millions of people across the country – including lawmakers, their staffs and political parties – have read, watched and heard RESOLVE leaders and IVF patients and doctors.

Taking Care of Caretakers

Posted on by fentonadmin

Martin Scorsese’s 1999 film Bringing Out The Dead stars Nicholas Cage as an EMT worker experiencing the damning delirium of driving an ambulance in New York City. When I first saw the film, I thought this kind of job would never be for me. But sometimes in life, you find yourself doing things you said you would never do. 

When I got the call from my girlfriend that she was pregnant, I was 18 years old and jobless. I was a lackluster student; my real focus was on activism and starting hardcore punk bands. Desperate for sustainable work, I took a friend’s advice and took a six-month course to become an emergency medical technician working on an ambulance. Two months before my son was born, I became a certified EMT. 

I started out doing what people in the field referred to as general transport: taking patients that required medical attention from one medical facility to another. The hours were long — four ten-hour shifts that often went into mandatory overtime. Sometimes the patients were difficult.  Even worse, my co-workers could be demeaning or rude. As a working student, I also struggled with the schedule. So, against my better judgment, I requested to be transferred to the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) division, which responded to 911 calls. In EMS, I could work three thirteen-hour shifts, which meant I could take more courses and finish my degree faster.

At first, I found EMS to be exciting and purposeful. People recognized my ability to connect with patients. I enjoyed talking to people and helping calm them on some of the worst days of their life. I became the person who held patients’ hands and asked them questions. It took only a few bad calls for this sense of purpose and strength to fade. 

It’s the calls with kids that will get you. That’s what any EMT will tell you. I still vividly recall climbing into a wrecked vehicle to talk with a young girl who was trapped inside. I held her hand, took her blood pressure, and asked her which subjects in school she liked best. All the while, the fire department was trying to cut off the car door. She asked me if she would be okay. I don’t remember what I told her, but what I do remember is the feeling of a screw coming loose in my mind. 

In the weeks that followed, it seemed like every call was a bad call. I started losing sleep. I lost an unhealthy amount of weight. I started to shake. Once, while evaluating a patient, they interrupted to ask if I was okay. I wasn’t. And it wasn’t just the trauma of the action –  it was also the long hours of boredom, filled with dread, praying that the next call would be a migraine or a stomachache. 

Eventually, after talking with my girlfriend (now my wife), I decided I needed help. I called my father and asked him to take me to an emergency room because I was afraid I was going to hurt myself. They wrote me prescriptions for Xanax and Ambien, told me I should see a therapist and let me go. It was not the empathy that I once strove to give my own patients. 

Bills needed to be paid, and I had used up my meager paid sick time. So I went back to work. I started seeing a therapist regularly, but then my employer’s insurance plan capped the frequency at which I could see them. Around this same time, a banner was strung up at work: “Happy EMS Week, First Responders!” It hung above a table with complimentary coffee mugs and a box of donuts. It was an astonishing display of empty words in the face of the hell that my fellow EMTs and I were going through on a daily basis. I quit shortly thereafter and drove a school bus until I found another job at a nonprofit. 

My time as an EMT is not on my resume. But it shapes how I relate to people that work in healthcare, especially those at the lower end of the professional pecking order. It gives me insight into how people cope — or don’t cope — with trauma. 

During the scariest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, I couldn’t help but dwell on the experiences of the frontline workers facing the crisis. I wondered how many of the declared “heroes” were experiencing the same trauma I had once experienced. I wondered how many of them sought care for what was going on in their heads, only to face a labyrinth of insurance bureaucracy and dismally inadequate care. 

Many years after my experiences riding in ambulances, I am now at Fenton, working as a communicator and advocate for health workers. I ask myself: What can I do to make my words translate to more than words? How can my work overcome the emptiness of the “Happy EMS Week” banner? How can my work make a meaningful difference to someone who is doing the best they can to help others – while struggling themselves?’ 

I don’t have all the answers. But my work continues. It begins with remembering what I’ve gone through and empathizing with those who still do the critical work of critical care. It means humanizing those who we elevate in our campaigns. These people are more than their work – and certainly more than their traumas. We must recognize that thanking people for their lifesaving work is an important start but is, in fact, only a start. There is more to be done and more to be said. I am committed to speaking for them, for us, and for change.