For people undergoing fertility care in Alabama, it's been a week of chaos, tears, angry emails, and confusion after the state Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that their embryos are legally considered "children."
The ruling means that, for now, embryos in Alabama created via in vitro fertilization (IVF)—an already emotional, physically grueling, and expensive pathway to parenthood—are frozen in time, figuratively and literally. Because of the legal implications, many IVF clinics have closed their doors. Doctors aren't creating new embryos or completing transfers of fertilized eggs to a patient's uterus, out of fear that they could be liable for "wrongful death," per the decision in Burdick-Aysenne v. Center for Reproductive Medicine (a case brought by three couples whose frozen embryos were accidentally destroyed by an unauthorized person in the clinic's lab). Moreover, IVF could be in jeopardy even beyond the Yellowhammer state, says Barbara Collura, the CEO of RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association. On Wednesday, Republicans in the U.S. Senate blocked a bill that would establish federal protections for IVF.
Although the state legislature is considering proposals to protect IVF, the ruling has upended the lives of people with embryos in Alabama. That includes those who have struggled with infertility for years, members of the LGBTQ+ community for whom IVF is the only path to biological children, and patients who have undergone cancer treatments and cannot conceive on their own. These are people who know better than anyone that their embryos aren't "extrauterine children." What they want most in the world are kids of their own. |
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