Frozen embryos are children, Alabama supreme court rules
COUPLES are racing to transfer frozen embryos out of Alabama after a state court defined them as living children.
Alabama’s Supreme Court last Friday enacted the toughest anti-abortion measure in the US, classifying frozen embryos as people. Anyone who destroys one can now be held liable under the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.
The White House condemned the ruling as an example of the “chaos” since the overturning of Roe vs Wade. The move is expected to have huge ramifications for the fertility industry in the state, which could see prices soar and clinics shut down.
It could also embolden other states, likely those with strict abortion laws, to follow suit.
Karine Jean-pierre, a White House press secretary, said: “This is exactly the type of chaos that we expected when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade and paved the way for politicians to dictate some of the most personal decisions families can make.”
Meghan Cole, a fertility patient from Alabama, said she is scrambling to have her frozen embryos transferred to an “IVF friendly” state such as New York or New Jersey. The lawyer, 31, was diagnosed with a rare blood disease as a teenager which makes it unsafe for her to carry a child. She and her husband have been through two rounds of IVF, both of which resulted in nonviable embryos being discarded.
On Friday, one embryo is being transferred to her surrogate, a procedure she feared would be cancelled because the clinic would be “paralysed with fear”.
“I’m scared of what I’m supposed to be doing with the embryos that are going to remain frozen”, Mrs Cole told The Telegraph. “It just didn’t cross my mind that, you know, I would ever, potentially be held liable for discarding embryos in the normal course.”
The ruling stems from two lawsuits filed by three sets of parents whose embryos were allegedly destroyed in December 2020 when a patient removed them from the cryogenic nursery and dropped them on the floor.
The parents sued for wrongful death but a trial court dismissed their claims, finding the embryos did not fit the description of a “person”. In February, the state supreme court reversed the ruling and said the embryos are “children” and are covered by the state’s wrongful death of a minor law.
Eric Wrubel, the co-chairman of the Fertility Law Group and Warshaw Burstein, said: “According to Alabama, you’ve just committed 1,500 murders. That’s insane.
He added: “We’ve come so far in terms of helping families and couples have children and have children in a safe way, in a healthy way, having healthy children, and then we just turn back the clock and say, ‘no, let’s not do that.’”