Republicans scramble to protect an IVF shield law
Alabama lawmakers on Wednesday raced to protect the routine practice of in vitro fertilization, moving to assuage families and fertility clinics alarmed by a recent state Supreme Court ruling that found that frozen embryos should be considered children.
The lawmakers' urgency underscores the bind for Republicans, who have long maintained that life begins at conception — a tenet of their opposition to abortion — but must now reconcile that stance with the realities of how IVF is practiced and the broad public support for it.
Republican leaders across the nation have been quick to express their support for IVF, with the party already struggling to counter the backlash over stringent anti-abortion laws it has backed in a critical election year.
Former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination for president, called on the Alabama Legislature to protect IVF treatment, while in Florida, lawmakers sidelined a bill this week that would allow lawsuits over the wrongful death of a fetus.
In Alabama, top Republicans are now coalescing around a proposal that would provide immunity to IVF clinics, barring any intentional destruction of embryos outside the usual medical process.
Faced with an onslaught of anger from families pursuing the taxing in vitro process, lawmakers have set a fast timetable: Both the Senate and House advanced bills Wednesday, with the aim of having a law signed within days. The measures appear crafted to respond to widespread concerns about protecting access to reproductive medicine while acknowledging the accidental destruction of embryos that led to the ruling this month. Unlike proposals introduced by Democrats in the state Legislature, the measures do not address the question of whether frozen embryos should be considered unborn children, and instead focus on providing civil and criminal immunity for clinics, hospitals and providers.
The court ruling, which currently applies only to the families who sued over the destruction of their embryos at a Mobile, Alabama, hospital in 2020, raised alarm nationally because of its explicit judgment that frozen embryos could be considered children. Many people expressed worry that they could be criminally prosecuted for discarding embryos.
The court ruling led at least three major fertility clinics in Alabama to halt IVF treatments and left families across the state fearing that it would cut them off from the possibility of having children through IVF. Politicians, doctors and parents across the country — Democrat and Republican alike — have also come forward to speak about their experiences with IVF and reproductive medicine.
On Wednesday, people assembled outside the State House to call on lawmakers to act quickly to end their uncertainty. In a committee hearing, one woman described an agonizing, yearslong effort to have a child that had abruptly crawled to a halt in the aftermath of the ruling. Another woman told lawmakers that after a painful battle with cancer, she was finally able to become pregnant through IVF.