Chuck Schumer's guest at State of the Union is Westchester woman pregnant via IVF

A Westchester woman who is pregnant thanks to in vitro fertilization is headed to Washington D.C. as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's guest at President Joe Biden's State of the Union address Thursday.

Kate Farley, 35, is a First Amendment and media lawyer who lives in Irvington. She said she was able to get pregnant easily but she kept having miscarriages because of a pre-existing genetic condition called balanced chromosomal translocation.

"What that means is I'm fine, but many of the eggs I produce are not. Some of them are OK but many of them don't have all the DNA necessary to make a baby," Farley said. "When I heard about the condition, it was one of the things where the doctor said 'This is something where IVF can help.'"

IVF procedures have recently been in the national spotlight after a Feb. 20 Alabama Supreme Court decision that frozen embryos used in the procedure were "extrauterine children" and are protected under the state's constitution, potentially impacting access to thousands of women.

Farley's IVF journey

In vitro fertilization happens when a sperm and an egg are combined in a fertility center lab and transferred as an embryo to a woman's uterus. Yale Medicine says it is the most successful fertility treatment available.

Farley said her IVF treatment included several egg retrievals, which doctors used to make embryos in the lab. They then were able to take biopsies of each embryo from a piece of the future placenta and check to see if it had all the DNA required to make a baby, hopefully avoiding a miscarriage.

"We did an embryo transfer in 2020 and that worked because they were able to find one that had all the DNA and that's our son," she said.

Now, she is 37 weeks pregnant and getting ready to welcome her second child, a girl, into the world thanks to IVF.

"It was hard to hear that IVF was my only option," Farley said, "But it was so much better than the alternative before IVF because with my condition, the alternative was that women had dozens of miscarriages if her or her partner had a chromosomal translocation."

Farley, and husband, Westchester County Legislator David Imamura travel to Washington D.C. Thursday.

Legal battle over birthing

Only 2% of births in the U.S. every year are births resulting from IVF treatment, but the method is vitally important for women who have health conditions that prevent them from getting pregnant.

But after Alabama's Supreme Court ruling , what was Farley's only hope for a natural birth is now at risk for thousands of women across the country.

The decision comes after several challenges to women's reproductive rights in the country, including the U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade after 73 years of legal abortions in 2022 and a challenge to FDA's approval of abortion pill Mifepristone in December.

She said when she read the decision she cried.

"The decision is immensely frustrating on the first level because there is a treatment available and you're not allowed to use it," Farley said. "My heart breaks for women who are in the middle of treatment, because now they have to stop or start over. What's the fate of their embryos? They have to get their embryos out of the state."

She said she's spoken to women who have had five or six miscarriages in a row. One woman she spoke to even needed surgical intervention to remove the embryo or fetus from the body.

"It takes an incredible emotional and physical toll on your family," Farley said.

However, Farley said the decision that embryos are "babies" also personally resonated with her.

"My entire problem is that I can make dozens of embryos that will never develop into babies," she said. "An embryo is not a baby."

Fertility clinics in Alabama put the procedures on pause out of fear of legal repercussions, some even as serious as homicide charges.

"What helped me a lot during the treatment was knowing that there are all these doctors who spent their life's work pursuing this so that I could have a child," Farley said.

Schumer said he chose Farley as his guest this year to call attention to the issues of reproductive rights for women in the country.

"We know the importance of comprehensive reproductive healthcare for families across the country and yet, Republicans are trying to enact restrictions across the country on everything from abortion to contraception to IVF in a terrifying attempt to take away freedom of choice, but we will never let that stand," Schumer said. "That is why I am privileged to bring Kate as my guest to help highlight the story of this Hudson Valley family for our entire nation, because it is a story like so many others across America, and it shows why these rights are absolutely essential."

Democrats put reproductive justice in the spotlight

Schumer isn't the only one bringing a guest involved in reproductive rights. According to a report from the Washington Post, many Democrats are welcoming several people who have experienced abortions and IVF births

• First Lady Jill Biden invited Kate Cox, a Texas mother of two who looked to have an abortion after she discovered her fetus would be born with a fatal genetic condition and continuing with the pregnancy could put her health and fertility at risk. Cox had to leave the state to get the abortion after petitioning with Texas courts.

  • Another of the First Lady's guests is Latorya Beasley, a woman whose embryo transfer and IVF treatment was abruptly cancelled after the Alabama Supreme Court hearing.

• Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) will bring Kayla Smith, who traveled from Idaho to Washington to get an abortion after discovering her fetus had genetic abnormalities that were fatal.

• House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) is hosting Amanda Zurawski, a Texas woman who was denied an abortion even after her fetus had no chance of surviving. She delivered after becoming septic, causing her permanent physical damage.

• Caitlin Bernard, the doctor who was thrown into the spotlight after she performed an abortion on a 10-year-old rape victim from Ohio, will be attending as a guest of Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.)

• Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) invited Tammi Kromenaker, who was the only abortion provider in North Dakota for 20 years before leaving the state and moving her business to Minnesota.

• Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) will host Amanda Adeleye, an Illinois reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist.

• One of the most high-profile guests is Elizabeth Carr, the first baby born from an IVF procedure in the United States in 1981. She was invited by Sen. Tim Kaine from her home state of Virginia.

• Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) will host Roshni Kamta, a woman from Jersey City who decided to freeze her eggs after she found out she had breast cancer at only 22 years old.

• Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) invited Olivia Manayan, chief OB/GYN resident at the University of Hawaii.

• Mini Timmaraju, president of notable nonprofit Reproductive Freedom for All, will attend the State of the Union as a guest of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.)

• Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) is hosting Barbara Collura, the president of Resolve: The National Infertility Association.

• Jodi Hicks, CEO of Planned Parenthood Associates of California, was invited by Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.)

Farley's presence at the State of the Union address will also bring the attention of the reproductive rights issue in front of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), who notably compared abortion to "an American holocaust" in May 2022.

“In a world created by the MAGA Republican Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe, women and families are living in fear that the Republican’s anti-reproductive, anti-freedom agenda are taking these choices away," Schumer said. "Like Kate, there are countless people today who have the joy of children solely because of IVF and comprehensive reproductive healthcare, and no American trying to get pregnant should have to live in fear that their access to becoming a parent through in vitro fertilization could be taken away or worry their fundamental rights could disappear tomorrow."

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Why Westchester NY woman is Chuck Schumer's guest at State of the Union