Alabama lawmakers passed legislation on Wednesday that aims to protect in vitro fertilization (IVF) access following the controversial ruling by the state's Supreme Court regarding the procedure last month.
The bill specifically protects doctors, clinics and other health care personnel who provide IVF treatments from facing civil and criminal liability. Questions on the procedure's legality in the state were raised after Alabama's high court ruled that frozen embryos created during IVF have the same rights as children under the law.
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey, a Republican, signed the measure into law later in the day Wednesday.
The Context
Alabama's Supreme Court raised concerns on both sides of the aisle after issuing its unanimous ruling on February 16. The decision had an immediate impact on fertility treatment in the state, causing many health care facilities to pause all IVF treatments in the days following out of fear that providers could face criminal or punitive damages.
The decision has also intensified the ripple effect across the country, as states were already grappling with the future of reproductive care after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022. Many states have indicated that they plan to address IVF questions in their own legislatures following Alabama's ruling.
What We Know
The bill passed on Wednesday with bipartisan support in both chambers of Alabama's legislature, coasting in the state House 81-12 and 29-1 in the Senate.
The measure faced some pushback from Democratic lawmakers during discussions, however, who argued that the bill did not clarify whether frozen embryos were children or not under state law. A handful of Democrats in the state House had proposed a bill that explicitly stated that embryos "outside of the uterus" were not "considered an unborn child," although the measure did not receive enough support to advance.
Republican proponents of the bill, however, have said that the measure is intended to be a quick fix to allow IVF clinics to reopen in Alabama.
"We want the clinics to be open," Republican State Representative Terri Collins, chief sponsor of the bill in the House, previously said. "This is what this is trying to accomplish."
Views
Ivey said in a statement Wednesday that the bipartisan effort by state lawmakers to protect IVF providers "proves what we have been saying: Alabama works to foster a culture of life, and that certainly includes IVF."
"IVF is a complex issue, no doubt, and I anticipate there will be more work to come, but right now, I am confident that this legislation will provide the assurances our IVF clinics need and will lead them to resume services immediately," the governor added.
A handful of religious and anti-abortion groups had signed a letter to Ivey on Monday, urging the governor to veto the bill and to avoid making what they called "a rash reaction to a troubling situation."
"Any political determination that takes up the question of how we treat and protect human lives—no matter how young—must resist an ideology that treats human beings as expendable commodities," the letter read. "Any legislation on this issue must take into consideration the millions of human lives who face the fate of either being discarded or frozen indefinitely, violating the inherent dignity they possess by virtue of being human."
Anti-abortion activist Lilia Rose, who founded nonprofit Live Action—one of the groups behind the letter to Ivey—said that the bill signed on Wednesday gives the "IVF industry a license to kill," arguing that "stripping embryonic human beings of legal protections" was against the U.S. Constitution and Alabama state law.
"Politicians cannot call themselves pro-life, affirm the truth that human life begins at the moment of fertilization, and then enact laws that allow the callous killing of these preborn children simply because they were created through IVF," Rose said in a statement shared with Newsweek on Thursday.
What's Next?
According to The New York Times, the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) health system, the state's largest, said that it was "moving to promptly resume IVF treatments" but that it would continue to monitor "developments and advocate for protection."
Two IVF clinics involved in the wrongful death lawsuit behind the state's Supreme Court ruling—Infirmary Health Systems and the Center for Reproductive Medicine—said it would not yet resume IVF procedures.
Update 03/07/24, 3:40 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with comment from Live Action.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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