Alabama Hospital Shuts Down IVF Treatment Over Fears of Prosecution

Jeremy Childs
·2 min read
28

A recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling declaring fertilized embryos as “extrauterine children” is already impacting fertility clinics across the state, with one of the largest hospitals temporarily ceasing in-vitro fertilization treatments.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham’s health system said Wednesday that it is pausing IVF treatments in the wake of the ruling. University Hospital, the flagship hospital of the health system, is among the largest hospitals in the United States, with over 1,200 hospital beds.

“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,” Hannah Echols, a UAB spokeswoman, said in an email to AL.com.

GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley voiced support for the Alabama court’s decision Wednesday, saying “embryos, to me, are babies.”

“When you talk about an embryo, to me, that’s a life,” Haley told NBC News in an interview. She added that she used artificial insemination to have her son, Nalin.

UAB’s sudden pause reflects the gray area left in the aftermath of the state court’s ruling and has echoes of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which threw abortion providers across the country into turmoil.

The cases that led to the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling involved the Center for Reproductive Medicine, a fertility clinic in Mobile, Alabama, that was sued by three couples. The couples had all gone through IVF treatment at the clinic but lost the embryos after they were removed from frozen storage. They sought damages under Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act and were granted such by a near-unanimous ruling by the state’s highest court.

Advocates have warned the ruling could impact fertility treatments across the state — and potentially nationwide — if appealed to federal courts.

Dana Sussman, the deputy executive director of legal advocacy group Pregnancy Justice, told Rolling Stone the ruling could further entrench anti-abortion policy through its rhetoric around fertilized embryos.

“It leaves the door open wide enough to make this argument with a straight face the next time around… in the context of not just babies born through IVF, but fetuses or ‘unborn life’ as having these 14th Amendment rights,” Sussman said.

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