The largest hospital in Alabama, USA, has stopped using vitro fertilization after the state’s supreme court issued a landmark ruling declaring that frozen embryos qualify as “children.”
The Alabama Supreme Court’s decision to declare frozen embryos to be children and to hold anyone accountable for inadvertently destroying them has sparked a new controversy in the US. Following the court’s decision, the hospital in the southern US state decided to stop offering in-vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments out of concern that they might face criminal charges.
The University of Alabama at Birmingham’s health system announced that it will keep taking eggs out of women’s ovaries. It did state, though, that they would stop the next step of the IVF procedure. The eggs are then fertilized with sperm in the following stage before being inserted into the uterus.
“We are saddened that this will impact our patients’ attempt to have a baby through IVF,” said the leading state medical provider, in a statement.
“But 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,” it added.
What was the lawsuit and what was the decision made by the court?
The case originated from a wrongful death lawsuit that three couples filed in 2020 following the loss of their embryos at a fertility clinic. Someone had gone into the embryo storage area, handled the cells, and unintentionally dropped them. The embryos were destroyed as a result. The couples also filed lawsuits under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act against the Mobile Infirmary Association and the Center for Reproductive Medicine. The law covers foetuses, but it does not mention embryos created through in vitro fertilization specifically.
The Alabama Supreme Court, however, decided that frozen embryos qualified as “children” and offered the couples support in their decision. As per the court’s ruling, “all unborn children, regardless of their location” were covered by the wrongful death law.
Chief Justice Tom Parker wrote, concurring with the majority’s view: “All human beings bear the image of God even before birth, and their lives cannot be destroyed without eroding his glory.” Even the couples who filed the case actively sought out the procedure; the ruling does not limit or outlaw IVF.
