How the IVF court ruling further diminishes women's health care in Alabama
On Feb. 16, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law, affecting millions of people nationwide.
On Feb. 16, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law, a decision affecting millions of fertility clinics that practice in-vitro-fertilization (IVF) and people trying to have a child.
“I never thought [IVF] was so polarizing. There’s mamas who I just truly believe are meant to be mamas that can’t do it without IVF,” Hannah Nelson of North Carolina told The Washington Post.
The Republican supermajority state court ruled that three Alabama couples who lost frozen embryos during an accident at a storage facility could sue the fertility clinic and hospital for the wrongful death of a minor based on anti-abortion language added to the Alabama Constitution in 2018, which protects the rights of unborn children under state law.
Infertility specialists and legal experts said the ruling could have profound ramifications for both would-be parents and physicians.
Some patients in Alabama are reportedly scrambling to move their embryos into another state with uncertainty about the procedures’s future. IVF, a process meant for people who have experienced fertility loss, is an “emotionally and physically exhausting process where doctors typically extract as many eggs as possible from women, fertilize them to create embryos, and then either implant them to create a pregnancy or freeze them for later use.” (Time Magazine)
Moreover, physicians who conduct this procedure are fearful of criminal charges amidst the court’s ruling. In fact, the largest providers of IVF in Alabama paused fertility treatments last week.
Over 86,000 infants were born through IVF in 2021, making up 2.3% of all births that year, according to the CDC. Nearly 202,000 embryo transfers were needed to get that number of infants.
The court’s ruling comes two years after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe. v Wade, which eliminated federal protections for abortion, making state supreme courts more critical for abortion rights. So far, 30 state supreme courts have decided cases challenging abortion rights under their state constitutions, and 15 states have seen a push for laws that would give a fetus the same rights as a person, per the Center for Reproductive Health.
On a national level, Senate Republicans blocked a bill proposed by Sen. Tammy Duckworth to enshrine a federal right to IVF treatment. Duckworth, a U.S. veteran who was seriously injured after her Black Hawk helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq, is one of many people in the country who had her two children through IVF.
“Infertility was one of the most heartbreaking struggles of my life,” Duckworth said to the Senate. “My miscarriage is more painful than any wound I ever earned on the battlefield.”