Alabama passes IVF protection bill
MONTGOMERY: Alabama lawmakers on Wednesday passed legislation to shield in vitro fertilisation providers from civil and criminal liability, capping off their scramble to allow the fertility treatment after a state Supreme Court ruling found that frozen embryos should be considered children.
But it was unclear whether the protections would be enough for the state’s major fertility clinics to restart treatments.
Doctors at one clinic said they were ready to begin again as early as the end of the week, while another clinic said it was not assured about the scope of protections and would wait for “legal clarification.”
As the measure headed to Gov Kay Ivey, a Republican, for her signature, lawmakers and legal experts acknowledged that it did not address existential questions raised by the court about the definition of personhood, leaving open the prospect of legal challenges in the future.
The overwhelming vote of support — 81-12 with nine abstentions in the House and 29-1 in the Senate — came barely two weeks after the ruling demonstrated the intense urgency among Republicans to protect IVF treatments, even if that meant sidestepping the thorny contradictions between their pledge to protect unborn life and fertility treatment practices.
“It’s happy tears, it’s a sigh of relief just because we know we are protected,” said Stormie Miller, a Hoover, Alabama, mother who had twin girls through IVF and has two remaining frozen embryos.
Talking about the future of those embryos, she added, “We’re able to make that decision for ourselves and not have someone make that decision for us.”
Reproductive medicine in the state was thrown into turmoil by the court ruling, which applied to a group of families who filed a wrongful-death claim over the accidental destruction of their embryos at a clinic in Mobile in 2020. But the court’s interpretation of Alabama statute that frozen embryos should be considered children
— coupled with an impassioned, theology-driven opinion from the chief justice — sowed fear about civil and criminal liability among doctors and clinics, and raised concern about the ramifications of other states taking a similar stance.
At least three major clinics stopped IVF treatments, and an embryo shipping company paused its business in the state. Patients, who said they were already exhausted by the financial, physical and emotional toll of treatment, pleaded with lawmakers to preserve their chance to grow their families.
And from Montgomery to Washington, Republicans suddenly found themselves racing to publicly endorse IVF treatments, with some lawmakers sharing their own fertility stories and others calling for a quick legislative fix.
The party has already struggled to respond to voter concerns about stringent anti-abortion laws in a hotly contested presidential year, and President Joe Biden and Democrats pointed to the ruling as yet another sign of Republican overreach into women’s lives.
But Alabama Republicans stopped short of addressing whether a frozen embryo conceived outside the womb should be considered a person.
Instead, they quickly negotiated a measure that broadly shields clinics and IVF providers from civil and criminal liability and limits the liability for shipping companies to damages to cover “the price paid for the impacted in vitro cycle.”
“The problem we’re trying to solve right now is to get those families back on a track to be moving forward as they try to have children,” said state Rep Terri Collins, the lead sponsor of the measure in the House.
“Will we need to address that issue? Probably.
“I don’t want to define life — that’s too important to me, to my faith,” Ms Collins, who previously led the push in the House to ban abortion in 2019, added.
“But we do have to decide where we begin protection, and that’s what I think we’ll have to talk about.”