IVF Documentary: Embracing the Human Experience
A powerful new fertility documentary follows IVF patients in Alabama as treatment, politics and deeply personal journeys collide – reminding us that behind every embryo, appointment and statistic is a real person hoping to build a family.
For anyone who has been through IVF, there is often a huge difference between understanding the treatment on paper and actually living it.
You can know what ovarian stimulation means. You can learn about egg retrieval, ICSI, embryo testing and embryo transfer. You can plan appointments and injections down to the hour.
But nothing quite prepares you for the waiting, uncertainty, hope, disappointment – or the extraordinary resilience that fertility treatment can demand.
A new documentary, Show Me The Line, brings that human reality of IVF powerfully to the screen.
Produced by Stacey Davis and directed by Kelsey Ianuzzi, the documentary follows Birmingham, Alabama resident Emily Capilouto and other IVF patients whose fertility treatment was suddenly thrown into uncertainty following the Alabama Supreme Court’s controversial 2024 embryo ruling.
But this isn’t simply a film about legislation.
It is about infertility, genetic testing, miscarriage, friendship, family, advocacy and the unexpected ways people find connection and hope during fertility treatment.
When IVF becomes the safest route to building a family
Emily’s journey towards motherhood began after marrying Dr James Harb in May 2021.
After coming off birth control, Emily discovered a congenital heart condition that had previously caused no obvious symptoms. Although doctors were able to treat it, concerns that the condition could be hereditary led to further preconception genetic screening.
Testing subsequently revealed that Emily carried a rare genetic mutation associated with a serious inherited condition affecting bone marrow.
Initially, genetic counsellors reportedly considered it unlikely that her husband would carry the same rare mutation.
But testing revealed something extraordinary: James carried not only the same mutation, but the same subtype.
It meant the couple faced a significant risk of passing the condition to a future child.
IVF therefore became about far more than overcoming infertility.
It offered Emily and James the possibility of creating embryos and testing them before transfer for the specific inherited genetic condition they carried.
This type of testing is commonly known as preimplantation genetic testing for monogenic conditions (PGT-M).
For families carrying certain inherited conditions, IVF with PGT-M can provide another reproductive option and information about embryos before a pregnancy is established.
Two and a half years before the first embryo transfer
One of the most powerful aspects of Emily’s story is something many IVF patients will immediately recognise: time.
It took approximately two and a half years from beginning the process to Emily’s first embryo transfer.
Fertility treatment is so often described as a series of clinical steps – stimulation, retrieval, fertilisation, embryo development, genetic testing and transfer.
What those descriptions don’t always capture are the weeks and months between those steps.
The waiting for appointments.
The waiting for test results.
The waiting to find out how many eggs were retrieved.
The wait to see whether embryos develop.
The wait for genetic testing results.
And finally, the seemingly endless wait to discover whether an embryo transfer has worked.
Emily’s first transfer was unsuccessful.
Her second resulted in miscarriage.
Despite appearing to be strong candidates for treatment, the outcome they desperately hoped for remained elusive.
It is an important reminder of one of IVF’s hardest realities: even when everything appears favourable, there are no guarantees.
Then the law changed
On 16 February 2024, Emily’s already difficult IVF journey collided with an extraordinary legal development.
The Alabama Supreme Court ruled in a case concerning embryos destroyed at a fertility clinic that frozen embryos could be considered children under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.
The implications for IVF were immediate.
Several fertility providers in Alabama paused aspects of IVF treatment amid concerns about potential legal liability surrounding the handling, storage and disposal of embryos.
For patients already undergoing fertility treatment, the uncertainty was devastating.
Emily decided she could not remain silent.
She became one of the patients speaking publicly about what the decision meant for people trying to build their families through IVF.
As she described it, she was quite literally “fighting for my family.”
Her story reached national and international audiences as the Alabama IVF ruling ignited a much wider debate about reproductive medicine, embryo status and access to fertility treatment.
Why IVF access also matters to cancer patients
The implications extended beyond people undergoing IVF for infertility or inherited genetic conditions.
Fertility preservation can also be time-critical for people diagnosed with cancer.
Chemotherapy, radiotherapy and some other cancer treatments can affect fertility, which is why some patients may be offered the opportunity to freeze eggs, sperm or embryos before beginning treatment.
Emily understood this particularly well through her professional work in cancer outreach.
Any uncertainty surrounding fertility services therefore has the potential to affect people whose window for preserving their fertility may already be extremely limited.
It highlights an important point sometimes lost in political debates around IVF:
Fertility medicine isn’t one single patient journey.
It can involve infertility, recurrent pregnancy loss, genetic conditions, cancer treatment, fertility preservation and many other circumstances.
A temporary protection for IVF – but questions remain
Following the national reaction to the ruling, Alabama lawmakers acted quickly.
On 6 March 2024, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed legislation providing civil and criminal immunity in connection with IVF services, allowing clinics that had paused treatment to resume care.
However, the legislation did not overturn the underlying Alabama Supreme Court decision.
For fertility advocates, that distinction matters.
The events in Alabama demonstrated how quickly decisions made outside the fertility clinic can have profound consequences inside it – affecting embryos in storage, planned retrievals, transfers and people who may already have spent years trying to have a baby.
And the debate is far from uniquely American.
Around the world, access to fertility treatment continues to be shaped by law, geography, cost, funding, insurance, regulation and political decisions.
For patients, where they live can dramatically influence not only how much IVF costs, but which treatments they can access and when.
The other story in Show Me The Line: connection
Yet what makes Show Me The Line particularly interesting is that it doesn’t appear to focus solely on courts, clinics and politics.
It captures the smaller moments too.
Friendships formed between women going through IVF.
Hospital appointments.
Families supporting one another.
And Emily arranging flowers with her mother, Mary Lynne.
There is another extraordinary layer to their relationship.
Mary Lynne had undergone IVF herself, as part of one of the earlier generations of women receiving fertility treatment in Alabama. Her treatment was unsuccessful, and Emily was later adopted.
Years later, mother and daughter found themselves navigating IVF together again – this time with Mary Lynne accompanying Emily to appointments and egg retrievals.
During some of the most stressful periods, arranging flowers together became an outlet.
Creating something beautiful gave Emily moments of calm and joy amid a process largely outside her control.
It’s a small detail, but perhaps one of the documentary’s most important.
Because IVF can become all-consuming.
Sometimes it is walking.
Painting.
Music.
Cooking.
Writing.
Gardening.
Exercise.
Talking to someone who understands.
Or simply doing something that reminds you that you are still you outside fertility treatment.
The power of finding someone who understands
Emily also found something we believe passionately in at IVFbabble: connection.
The women she met through IVF and subsequent advocacy became close friends.
There is something incredibly powerful about speaking to another person who doesn’t need the acronyms explained.
Someone who understands why you’re staring at your phone waiting for the clinic to call.
Why a pregnancy announcement can simultaneously make you happy for someone and desperately sad for yourself.
Why “just relax” isn’t helpful.
Why the two-week wait can feel like two months.
And why hope can return even after you thought you had none left.
This is one of the reasons IVFbabble was created – so nobody going through infertility, IVF, miscarriage or fertility treatment should feel that they are the only person experiencing it.
Finally, the line they had waited for
In 2025, almost four years after Emily’s IVF journey began, the couple underwent their third embryo transfer.
This time, it worked.
After everything she had experienced, Emily understandably spent much of her pregnancy worrying that something might go wrong.
But the pregnancy progressed well.
In December 2025, four days after Emily’s birthday, she gave birth to their son.
Her mother was there in the delivery room.
A woman who had once undergone IVF herself, who later became a mother through adoption, was now standing beside her daughter as she welcomed the baby she had spent years trying to bring into the world.
It is difficult to imagine a more poignant full-circle moment.
“Don’t let this take away your joy”
Emily’s message to the person she was at the beginning of her fertility journey is perhaps the message many people going through IVF need to hear.
She acknowledges that the process would take longer and hurt more than she could possibly have imagined.
But she would also remind herself that people were supporting her – including people she might not even realise were cheering her on.
And, importantly, not to allow fertility treatment to take away every source of joy.
That doesn’t mean pretending IVF isn’t hard.
It means remembering that amid injections, scans, results, embryo updates and waiting, you are allowed moments that have absolutely nothing to do with fertility.
Moments of friendship.
Creativity.
Laughter.
Love.
Flowers.
Life.
Why Show Me The Line matters
Fertility treatment is frequently discussed through numbers.
Egg numbers.
Embryo grades.
AMH levels.
Age.
Risk percentages.
But every number represents a human story.
Show Me The Line appears to capture what statistics cannot: what it actually feels like when medicine, hope, loss, politics and the desire to build a family collide.
The documentary was recently shown at the Sidewalk Film Festival and is due to screen at the 37th Annual New Orleans Film Festival.
For anyone who has experienced IVF – and for policymakers, employers, healthcare professionals, friends and relatives who want to understand it better – stories like Emily’s matter.
Because IVF is never simply a medical procedure.
It is something people live.
Are you going through IVF or trying to understand your options?
At IVFbabble and Babble Connect, our aim is to help you navigate your fertility journey with trusted information, practical tools and connections to fertility experts and clinics.
Explore guidance on IVF, genetic testing and fertility treatment, compare IVF costs and access around the world, ask fertility experts questions and connect with others who understand what this journey can really feel like.
And if you are in the middle of treatment right now, remember Emily’s message: fertility treatment can occupy an enormous part of your life, but it doesn’t have to take every piece of joy with it.
Editorial/source note: This article is based on Emily Capilouto’s story and reporting originally published by Over the Mountain Journal on 4 September 2026. Additional IVF, PGT-M and fertility-access context has been added by IVFbabble.
