Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said he does not plan on using the recent state Supreme Court ruling on embryos to prosecute families who use in vitro fertilization.
Marshall said he “has no intention of using the recent Alabama Supreme Court decision as a basis for prosecuting IVF families or providers,” according to a statement from Chief Counsel Katherine Robertson that was provided to CNN.
ALABAMA IVF CASE: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE CONTROVERSIAL OPINION
The court ruled last week that frozen embryos are children, and Republicans are dealing with the political fallout that highlights another manner in which the striking down of Roe v. Wade is affecting more people than those who are anti-abortion.
To combat the rising turmoil nationwide, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the Alabama House and Senate is planning legislation to “protect” IVF procedures, sources told the outlet.
Alabama House Democrats introduced a bill on Thursday to establish that fertilized human eggs stored outside a uterus are not human beings under state law. Republican state senators are expected to file similar legislation soon, but the source said the timing is unknown.
National Republicans have called on the state to make changes. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said the court “correctly assessed the law” but said the state’s law needs to be rewritten for the sake of the party.
“I believe the Alabama law needs to change because the Republican Party cannot be the party against family formation,” he said in an interview with CNN NewsNight.
“Something is totally wrong,” the congressman said. “The people who want to have a family should have the government and the law on their side. And the notion that discarded embryos in an IVF somehow turn these people, who want children and want families and want the American dream, into criminals is really wrong.”
Statistically, many GOP voters who have faced an inability to conceive naturally have undergone IVF treatments, so seeing that choice taken from them could do consequential damage to independent and centrist Republican voters. The ruling essentially placed a target on the back of national GOP members, especially vulnerable Republicans, as the party heads into a critical general election in November.
In an interview with the news outlet, former Alabama Democratic Sen. Doug Jones slammed the court’s decision.
“Who the hell is going to want to come to Alabama after this ruling? How are they going to attract doctors?” Jones, who served in the Senate from 2018 to 2021, said.
In a memo sent on Friday, the National Republican Senatorial Committee said it “encourages Republican Senate candidates to clearly and concisely reject efforts by the government to restrict IVF.”
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Alabama Supreme Court justices ruled that IVF patients from 2020, whose frozen embryos were destroyed after they were dropped on the floor, could sue under Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, “which applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location,” according to the court’s ruling.
Following the decision, the University of Alabama at Birmingham health system announced it was halting its IVF procedures immediately over fear of lawsuits and prosecutions. It is the largest hospital in the state and the eighth-largest in the nation. Other healthcare providers in Alabama quickly followed suit.
