National infertility association Resolve was caught off guard when Alabama’s Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos should be considered children.
The decision immediately affected access to treatments like in vitro fertilization throughout the state, with many fertility clinics closing or pausing scheduled procedures in fear of potential legal action.
The aftermath was reminiscent of the days that followed the Dobbs decision in 2022, overturning the abortion rights that were enshrined in the ruling of Roe v. Wade. Around that same time three years ago is when Resolve started engaging Fenton to ultimately bring the agency onboard for PR support.
Resolve monitors legislation at the state level to evaluate its impact on IVF, but the lawsuit in Alabama was brought about as a wrongful death case, not specifically targeting IVF, Fenton chief client officer Jennifer Hahn said. The emergence of an IVF access case in a state like Alabama was not surprising, she noted — the state was the first to pass a bill banning nearly all abortions.
“We always knew that IVF could become a target or threat through personhood legislation,” Resolve chief external affairs officer Rebecca Flick said, noting that the organization has been fighting the issue for 15 years.
The nonprofit was established in 1974 with the purpose of ensuring all people have access to care and coverage in their journey to build a family, including access to IVF. Alabama’s Supreme Court’s ruling that frozen embryos in test tubes should be considered “unborn children,” posed a threat to people seeking the procedure and doctors and professionals who could face repercussions for assisting them.
When the decision was announced on the Friday of President’s Day weekend in February, many reporters weren’t online in anticipation of the holiday. The time allowed Fenton’s team to get their “ducks in a row,” and get ahead of the story, Fenton VP Danielle Schlanger said, as they spent the weekend preparing the media plan.
“Our approach was two pronged: we wanted to reach Alabamians who were directly impacted by the ruling and show people across the U.S. that without these federal protections, any state could be next,” she said.
Immediate response
In the first two weeks that followed the decision, Fenton helped secure “wall to wall coverage,” with over 6,300 media hits, including 25 on CNN, eight on CBS, eight on ABC, seven in the AP and three in The New York Times, according to the firm. The Sunday following the ruling, the Fenton and Resolve teams made the executive decision to organize a rally in Montgomery, Schlanger explained.
With less than 12 hours notice, Fenton sent account director Olivia Idris and account executives Lena Haime and Cassandra Huffman to Alabama to serve as on-the-ground representatives. The trio were in charge of setting up the event, organizing with doctors, political and medical spokespeople and other stakeholders in attendance, as well as collecting first person accounts from patients and people who had previously undergone IVF.
It was important to have a presence in the state to share the stories of those who would be immediately affected by the ruling.
“Resolve is the voice of the patients,” Hahn said. “One of the reasons why this story was so powerful is that we ensured that we centered on the voices of patients and people who were impacted. It was their emotional storytelling that made this issue as explosive as it was and stayed as prominent as it was for so long.”
The rally the following Wednesday at the Alabama State House was attended by more than 200 people and received mass amounts of coverage, including features on the homepage of The New York Times and CNN. Fenton prioritized responding to national and local media outlets, while also sharing content and statements with global outlets they didn’t have the bandwidth to speak with directly, Hahn said.
The stories women shared were “devastating,” Schlanger said, ranging from people with multiple miscarriages, cancer survivors and some who had sold all their belongings to afford the medical procedure. Flick complimented Fenton’s team, many of which were young professionals, Hahn noted, for taking such care with sharing women’s extremely personal stories in a public way.
Fenton vetted personal accounts through Resolve’s Fight for Families campaign the firm helped launch in 2022, as well as stories directly from clinics in the area. There are five fertility clinics in Alabama — all of which Resolve and Fenton had pre-established relationships with — but the team utilized patient stories from Birmingham’s Alabama Fertility clinic for organization and resources around the rally.
Spokespeople identified by Fenton’s team also helped highlight the equity side of the issue, Hahn said, noting that not everyone who comes forward isn’t always representative of the entirety of people going through these struggles.
“These people who we spoke to were not political operatives,” Schlanger said. “They were just folks who wanted to have a baby. This was a way to turn pain into purpose for them. ”
There was also an education aspect for reporters around what IVF is, Hahn said. The issue was a “remarkable confluence of opportunity and urgency,” for educating people on how IVF helped people achieve a pregnancy.
Results
The agency-client duo has generated about 240 unique stories and over 6,300 media hits over the course of the last month, according to the firm, and has placed Fenton spokespeople and Resolve voices at the forefront.
Resolve president CEO Barbara Collura was invited to the White House as a guest of Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) for the State of the Union address, in which she discussed the future of IVF with other leaders following the Alabama decision.
The ruling “lit a fire” in the community, Flick said. Resolve saw an uptick in requests for its resources, such as support groups in local communities and volunteers, specifically in Alabama, but also across the country. The organization would normally receive one to two requests for a new support group per month, yet they were averaging 12 per week, immediately following the decision.
There has also been an increase in advocacy participation, with over 700 people signed up for Resolve’s federal advocacy day efforts, compared to 300 in 2023.
The issue of IVF has uniquely crossed party lines in its coverage, with both Democrats and Republicans vocally supporting fertility care since the ruling. Flick said a lot of the response had to do with the fact that being “pro-family is bipartisan.”
“You would be very hard pressed to find an issue that 85% of the American electorate agrees on and supporting IVF is one of them,” Hahn said. “We feel a little bit of satisfaction with the fact that within a few days of this story coming out, if you were running for any office, or if you were an elected official anywhere, you almost felt compelled to come out with a statement in support of IVF.”
Next steps
In March, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed a bill into law that shielded doctors from potential legal liability initially raised in the wrongful death lawsuit. The short-term measure was a result of Fenton and Resolve’s mass communication around the issue of IVF and potential ripples of the decision, but it by no means prevents the eventuality of further issues to come.
Fenton and Resolve are actively working on new campaigns and education around infertility and IVF, Schlanger said. Resolve’s National Infertility Awareness week will take place at the end of April. The nonprofit has added different message points to the week that’s been around since 1989 to apply what’s been going on in Alabama, Flick said.
Communicators can learn from Fenton and Resolve’s quick response to the Alabama ruling, Schlanger said, emphasizing the importance of having an infrastructure ahead of a crisis. Making sure that patient stories remain at the center is another critical part of responding to any health-related issues, she said.
“We had been preparing for this moment for a long time. A lot of other folks were caught flat footed,” Schlanger added. “Resolve has the infrastructure to be on the ground for a moment like this and we really utilized that. Then we became the go-to resource for every single reporter who wrote the story, who we’re still fielding requests from today to know what’s next.”
While it was impossible for the “cadence” of requests to continue at the level that it was the first two weeks following the ruling, the team is still working with outlets as the situation progresses.
“It has certainly lessened since then, but this story is going to continue through the election because for families who have had babies through this process, restricting access to IVF is unthinkable,” she said. “Until there is a federal safeguard for [IVF], this is going to continue being the story.”
No current law on the books has impacted IVF. Heading into an election season, Flick said Resolve is on alert, knowing that the lawmaking process at every state legislature around the country is very different.
This article originally appeared on PRWeek US.
For an April 2024 article on Trump’s abortion comments, click here.
