BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (LifeSiteNews) — Just days after the Alabama Supreme Court recognized frozen human embryos as children on Friday in an in vitro fertilization (IVF) case, “fertility clinics” in the Yellowhammer State are starting to announce that they are pausing their IVF operations to determine whether continuing would put them in legal jeopardy.
The lawsuit behind the ruling concerned a wrongful death lawsuit brought by three couples against the “fertility clinic” Center for Reproductive Medicine and Mobile Infirmary Medical Center for the accidental destruction of their embryos by a patient who accessed the storage area and then grabbed and dropped them. The parents contended the tragedy was covered under Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.
READ: Alabama Supreme Court affirms frozen embryos are children ‘regardless of their location’
The “sweeping and unqualified” Wrongful Death of a Minor Act “applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location,” Alabama Supreme Court Justice Jay Mitchell ruled. “It applies to all children, born and unborn, without limitation. 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. That is especially true where, as here, the People of this State have adopted a Constitutional amendment directly aimed at stopping courts from excluding ‘unborn life’ from legal protection.”
Section 36.06 of the Alabama Constitution “acknowledges, declares, and affirms that it is the public policy of this state to recognize and support the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children, including the right to life,” as well as to “ensure the protection of the rights of the unborn child in all manners and measures lawful and appropriate.” Alabama law bans abortion for any reason other than an alleged threat to the mother.
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Pro-abortion activists and IVF defenders expressed outrage at the decision, fearing its implications for their favored legal practices that entail destroying innocent human life. The Hill reported on one of the first manifestations of that fallout, with a University of Alabama at Birmingham health system spokesperson announcing “we must evaluate the potential that our patients and our physicians could be prosecuted criminally or face punitive damages” for adhering to what the health system called “the standard of care” for IVF procedures.
CNN added that another Birmingham IVF provider, Alabama’s “fertility clinic” in the area, also announced that it has “paused transfers of embryos for at least a day or two” and that the Medical Association of the State of Alabama predicts others in the business will follow suit.
In vitro fertilization is fraught with ethical peril, as it entails the conscious creation of scores of “excess” embryonic humans only to be killed and human lives being treated like commodities to be bartered over. It has been estimated that more than a million embryos are frozen in storage in the United States after IVF; a 2019 NBC News profile of Florida IVF provider Craig Sweet acknowledged that his practice has discarded or abandoned approximately a third of the embryos it places in cold storage.
The Catholic Church teaches that IVF is gravely immoral because it separates the sexual act from procreation and violates the right of the child to be born of a conjugal union.
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Fourteen states currently ban all or most abortions, but IVF is permitted everywhere in the country, and even most pro-life politicians generally steer clear of the issue. Pro-lifers hope, and pro-abortion activists fear, that the Alabama ruling could force the beginning of conversations about expanding recognition and protection of the preborn to those created and discarded by IVF.