An Alabama, US, governor signed a Bill last week that will protect providers and patients – doing in vitro fertilisation – from legal liability if any embryos they create are damaged or destroyed, just weeks after a state Supreme Court ruling that threatened the treatment’s use.
Three weeks ago the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are people, and that individuals could be held liable for destroying them: the new Bill, however, gives criminal and civil immunity “for death or damage to an embryo” related to IVF.
The unprecedented ruling had alarmed medical professionals and reproductive rights advocates, who warned it would jeopardise IVF access in the state. The Washington Post reports that several Alabama providers halted IVF treatments within days of the decision.
Governor Kay Ivey has been vocal about protecting IVF, and joined Republicans countrywide who have defended the treatment, distancing themselves from the ruling.
In a statement last week, she applauded the state legislature for what she described as a “stop-gap measure” allowing fertility clinics, which had closed after the ruling, to reopen.
“Alabama supports growing families through IVF,” she said. “From protecting the unborn to supporting IVF, Alabama is proud we are a pro-life, pro-family state.”
The University of Alabama, which stopped treatments after the ruling, said in a statement after Ivey’s signing that it was “moving to promptly resume” treatments.
The law also shields “manufacturers of goods used to facilitate” IVF or the transport of embryos from criminal charges, but stops short of providing blanket immunity for those companies.
While the law provides legal immunity for clinics that provide IVF treatments, it does not stipulate whether frozen embryos are people, as the Alabama Supreme Court said in its ruling.
During debates before the Bill was sent to Ivey’s desk, Alabama lawmakers acknowledged that even with the protective legislation, the state still had questions to contend with, including about personhood and when life begins.
Alabama last defined when life begins in a 2018 constitutional amendment that protected the “rights of unborn children” and was cited in the state Supreme Court’s ruling last month.
Advocates have praised the legislation as a necessity for families undergoing IVF to resume their treatment with legal protections, and after the ruling, Alabama’s legislature rushed to protect IVF treatment in response.
When both chambers met on 29 February to vote on protective measures, nearly half of Alabama’s seven clinics had paused their treatments, and three of the remaining four had stopped frozen embryo disposal.
Reproductive rights advocates view the law as a victory for women in Alabama. But it might be a fleeting one, Robin Marty, executive director of West Alabama Women’s Centre in Tuscaloosa, told The Washington Post last week.
“Providing legal rights to the unborn at any age of gestation is always going to be a legal mess,” she said.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
US company hit by lawsuits over destroyed IVF embryos
US couples file lawsuits over ‘worst ever’ IVF mix-up
DoH seeks comment on possible new assisted conception regulations