Alabama’s Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that, under the state’s statute on wrongful death, a fertility doctor could be held liable for accidentally destroying embryos.
Even some pro-life Republicans have condemned the ruling. In fact, one state senator is introducing a bill to protect in vitro fertilization (IVF) explicitly.
For example, state Sen. Tim Melson is both a doctor and a pro-life Republican… and he told local media that he plans to file legislation protecting IVF.
Melson says that embryos should be protected only after they’re implanted in a woman’s uterus.
“We have advanced so far in medicine that we’re storing everything from embryos to sperm to eggs for future use,” Melson told an NBC affiliate.
“We hadn’t really thought about the consequences of that, and it’s time to figure that out. I’m just saying that until it’s implanted in the uterus, there’s potential life and that people shouldn’t be criminalized or be held harmful for things that happen. They should be held harmless, and I think a lot of things that, again, that happened in those clinics are for good people just wanting to have a family with a normal life and raise kids.”
The ruling has prompted IVF clinics to pause their operations while assessing how to shield themselves from liability.
Take a look —
“We all know that conception is a big argument that it’s life,” Melson said Thursday. “I won’t argue that point, but it’s not going to form into a life until it’s put into the uterus.”https://t.co/qvmvZv98Fy
— AL.com (@aldotcom) February 22, 2024
Republicans at the national level have called for a similar bill. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., opined on the issue while campaigning for former President Donald Trump in her home state.
“We’ve got to talk about making sure we don’t take away women’s rights to IVF, women who are childbearing age and want to give birth to children,” Mace said. “I’ll be working very hard to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Trump has criticized the calls to ban abortion nationally, and he warned that a national ban might be very unpopular. He’s privately floated a 16-week ban, according to two associates, but he has yet to announce anything.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a longshot candidate for president, has criticized the ruling as unworkable while still sympathizing with the intent of the law.
“One, you want to make sure that embryos are protected and respected in the way that they’re supposed to be,” Haley said. “Two, you want to make sure that parents have the rights to make those decisions with their doctor as they go through in what they’re going to do.”
IVF involves mixing a sperm cell with an egg cell in a Petri dish and then transferring one or more of the fertilized eggs into the mother’s uterus. Since the 1970s, the practice has become popular among infertile women and among people with heritable illnesses. In the U.S., it results in about 84,000 births per year, according to CDC data.
However, IVF has also attracted controversy due to the practice of throwing away the unused embryos. Meanwhile, adoption has fallen due to a low supply of babies up for adoption.
Catalina Stubbe, the national director of Moms for Liberty, has encouraged infertile couples to adopt instead of trying IVF.
“There are many other options that moms can definitely take in consideration instead of IVF,” Stubbe said, differentiating her position from the group’s “This is sad to create a life just to end up like an experiment for a laboratory.”
According to the Alabama lawsuit, a fertility doctor accidentally dropped a jar of frozen embryos after freezer-burning his hand on the container. Several patients lost their frozen embryos, and three sued under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.
The Alabama ruling relies more on the state constitution than the U.S. Constitution, and so it looks unlikely to face an appeal.
The Horn editorial team and the Associated Press contributed to this article.