Eric Zuniga, Campus Carrier deputy news editor
The Alabama Supreme Court ruled on Feb. 16 that frozen embryos should legally be considered human beings in a decision that threatened in vitro fertilization (IVF) in the state and caused national backlash.
The case was brought by three couples whose embryos were destroyed by a patient who had gained access to freezers at a hospital. The couples sued the Center for Reproductive Medicine in Mobile, where they were receiving infertility treatment, alleging that the clinic caused wrongful death of minors and must pay damages.
Two lower courts rejected the couples’ argument before Alabama’s supreme court ruled that frozen embryos are people with the same legal protections as minors. Assistant Professor of Political Science Abigail Vegter said the ruling can be seen as an extension of the same logic that led the Supreme Court to remove the constitutional right to an abortion in 2022.
“A lot of people in the pro-life political camp would say life begins when an egg is fertilized—well, that is in vitro, right? That’s an embryo that is then frozen,” Vegter said. “When you take that logic to its natural conclusion, this decision was consistent, which makes some of that reasoning really complicated.”
The court’s opinion has been criticized by doctors in the reproductive health field. Dr. Jessica Scotchie, co-founder and director of Tennessee Reproductive Medicine in Chattanooga, said the idea that all embryos can develop into viable fetuses is not scientific.
“Out of a hundred embryos we test for 35-year-olds, half of them are abnormal and cannot produce a human being—physically cannot,” Dr. Scotchie said. “They would stop growing or they would miscarry, potentially posing the woman to complications [where] she still can’t get to the point where she actually has the ability for a healthy embryo to produce a healthy child.”
While the Alabama ruling did not explicitly ban IVF treatment in the state, it did expose fertility clinics to significant legal liability for accidental destruction of embryos. Three of the state’s IVF facilities announced they would be pausing treatment after the decision.
In response to the national backlash, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed a bill last week establishing legal immunity for doctors and facilities. Two Alabama clinics said they would restart treatment with the new law, but Dr. Scotchie said the legislation does not address the key issue of frozen embryos’ legal status.
“It doesn’t completely remove the liability to some because it doesn’t take away what the Supreme Court said, that they feel like an embryo is equal to a person,” Dr. Scotchie said. “I do think the downstream effect is that people in Alabama may say I feel vulnerable now, I’m going to seek care in another state that doesn’t have the same viewpoint from their high court.”
Restrictions on IVF treatment are politically unpopular, with 86% of Americans saying the procedure should be legal in a recent CBS News poll. According to Vegter, leaders in both parties have expressed opposition to the ruling.
“Democrats nationally have been very quick to say we knew this would happen with the overturning of Roe v. Wade; the threat to reproductive rights was not just abortion,” Vegter said. “Republicans are very much trying to distance themselves from this decision given the national fallout. There have been a lot of Republicans even in the state of Alabama who have said, no, we want to protect IVF.”
Vegter added that the decision may benefit Democrats in this year’s elections.
“We know since the overturning of Roe v. Wade that [reproductive rights] is a very powerful mobilizing issue for Democrats,” Vegter said. “The decision in Alabama is going to bring energy that they probably needed.”
Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois introduced a bill to establish national protections for IVF treatment, but an objection from Mississippi Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith blocked the bill’s passage. Democrats in the Georgia General Assembly introduced similar legislation that is still awaiting consideration in committee.
Though IVF currently remains legal in Georgia, Vegter said that the state’s strict anti-abortion laws could put fertility treatment at risk.
“Things like birth control, things like Plan B, things like IVF are standing on somewhat shaky ground because of how the state has responded to the overturning of Roe v. Wade,” Vegter said. “I think [conservative states] will learn a major lesson from Alabama that they need to protect IVF before legislating around personhood claims, because it’s just so wildly unpopular.”
The uncertainty created by the decision has caused many Alabama families to begin seeking fertility treatment in other states. Dr. Scotchie said her clinic has seen a surge in patients from Alabama.
“We did have a lot of patients calling us when this happened, before those clinics were able to start IVF again,” Dr. Scotchie said. “Some patients who are going through IVF, they’ve invested already many months of time and treatment and tens of thousands of dollars to get to the point of treatment and have everything canceled at the last minute.”
Tennessee Reproductive Medicine serves many patients in north Georgia and Alabama and maintains a monitoring office in Rome. With the possibility of similar rulings in other states, Dr. Scotchie hopes that providers will still be allowed to offer reproductive treatment in the South.
“I think we provide a great service. I think it would be a huge void to lose [reproductive treatment],” Dr. Scotchie said. “We don’t want to be looked at in the South as we’re this backward place in time that’s not allowing people to have access to life-changing care.”
According to Dr. Scotchie, one in six couples between the ages of 18 and 50 struggle with infertility. She said that IVF treatment, in which eggs are fertilized in a laboratory setting, is essential to treat many reproductive conditions.
“It’s not just to help patients get pregnant, but it’s also to help them decrease the likelihood that their kid has the BRCA mutation if the mom has it or hundreds of different recessive conditions,” Dr. Scotchie said. “As reproductive health professionals we believe that every human being has the ability and the right to have a family if they want to.”
Dr. Scotchie urged those concerned by recent reproductive rights restrictions to organize politically for these issues.
“It takes five minutes to find your federal and local legislators and write them a quick paragraph of why it’s important your state and the nation continue to have access to IVF,” Dr. Scotchie said. “We have to fight it and educate the politicians that this is not the road we need to go down.”