Alabama hospital first to halt IVF treatment over criminal liability fears after state Supreme Court ruling
A prominent Alabama hospital has become the first health center to pause in vitro fertilization over fears of criminal prosecution sparked by a controversial state Supreme Court decision — and experts think more Alabama hospitals and clinics will follow, according to reports.
The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) halted all IVF procedures this week following the state Supreme Court’s Friday ruling that frozen embryos and fertilized eggs have the same rights as children.
That court ruling has left clinics and hospitals across the state in chaos as experts begin assessing how it might affect the legality of treatment — and how staff and patients alike might become criminally liable for the treatment and death of embryos under the new law.
“We must evaluate the potential that our patients and our physicians could be prosecuted criminally or face punitive damages for following the standard of care for IVF treatments,” a UAB spokesperson told AL.com.
UAB added that it was “saddened” by how the ruling might affect parents trying to have children through IVF, which is a common last resort for people having trouble conceiving.
With IVF, a mother’s egg is fertilized outside of the body and then stored in a freezer until it is transferred to the womb.
The ruling stemmed from a 2020 incident where a patient at a clinic recklessly removed a tray of embryos from a hospital freezer and dropped it on the floor, destroying them.
Three families to whom the embryos belonged sued the clinic for wrongful death. The case was initially thrown out by a lower court judge, who ruled wrongful death could not apply to frozen embryos.
But the Alabama Supreme Court overruled that decision, with eight of the court’s nine judges ruling in favor of granting frozen embryos the same rights as children.
“Unborn children are ‘children’ … without exception based on developmental stage, physical location, or any other ancillary characteristics,” wrote Justice Jay Mitchell in the majority ruling.
“Even before birth, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory,” wrote Chief Justice Tom Parker in his concurring opinion, citing the “theologically based view of the sanctity of life adopted by the People of Alabama.”
That stance has left experts scratching their heads at what it could mean for a treatment that regularly subjected what the court called “extrauterine children” to treatments that would be cruel and homicidal to do to other children — including freezing them in liquid nitrogen and regularly subjecting them to life-threatening procedures.
“They didn’t say in vitro fertilization is illegal, and they didn’t say that you can’t freeze embryos. It’s even worse — there is no road map,” Barbara Collura, president of the infertility advocacy group Resolve, told the New York Times.
Others cautioned that the fallout will lead to more health care centers following UAB and abandoning Alabama altogether.
“Modern fertility care will be unavailable to the people of Alabama,” Dr. Paula Amato, president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, told the Times, adding that medical students might start avoiding the state, too.