The Republican-led Alabama state House and Senate passed concurrent bills on Thursday that provide legal protection to healthcare providers that perform in vitro fertilization services, an effort that comes in response to a controversial ruling from the state Supreme Court earlier this month that identified embryos as human children under the law.
The state House bill introduced by state GOP Rep. Terri Collins passed 94-6 and would extend civil and criminal immunity to providers of IVF services for the destruction of embryos created during the treatment process.
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The state Senate bill, proposed by state GOP Sen. Tim Melson, affords clinics providing IVF treatments similar protections and received unanimous approval on the floor.
The bills each now head to the other chamber for reconciliation before being sent to Gov. Kay Ivey (R-AL).
The controversial case arose in 2020 after five embryos were destroyed without the parents’ consent at the Alabama Center for Reproductive Medicine in Mobile due to a laboratory accident.
The question in the case involved whether or not the genetic parents of the embryos had recourse to hold the medical center liable under Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. Precedent from the court dating to 2011 and 2012 found that the statute, originally adopted in 1872, applied to unborn children in utero from the moment of conception.
Justice Jay Mitchell, writing for the majority, found that cryogenically frozen embryos created during the process of IVF that had not yet been transferred into the mother constituted “extrauterine children” and were protected under the law.
Republicans and Democrats in Alabama acted swiftly following the ruling to introduce legislation that would have protected IVF providers, who frequently destroy leftover and nonviable embryos created in the IVF process according to the standards of care for the procedure.
Melson told reporters last week that a woman should be able to determine what is done with remaining embryos following a successful implantation and viable pregnancy as a result of IVF.
“When a lady is two or three successful pregnancies and these are left over, it’s just time to make sure that they aren’t penalized for success,” he said upon introducing his bill last week.
Mitchell wrote in the majority opinion that the policy complications as a result of interpreting existing law are not the place of the judicial branch and instead must be taken up by the legislature in the form of new laws and regulations.
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“It is not the role of this Court to craft a new limitation based on our own view of what is or is not wise public policy,” Mitchell wrote.
Ivey said earlier this week that the state as a whole aims “to foster a culture of life, and that includes IVF.” She told reporters that she expected to have a bill on her desk “very shortly.”
