Alabama Attorney General Won’t Prosecute Families Using IVF

After the seminal ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that the state’s wrongful death law includes unborn children and human embryos, the state attorney general says he won’t prosecute families using IVF.

As LifeNews has reported, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that an embryo created through in-vitro fertilization (IVF) is a “minor child” and is no different under the law from an unborn child in the womb. Due to the 2018 Sanctity of Unborn Life Amendment in the state’s constitution, which declares it is “public policy” in Alabama to recognize “the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children,” the Court held that the law protects “‘the rights of the unborn child’ equally with the rights of born children.”

In LePage v. Mobile Infirmary Clinic, Inc., the Supreme Court of Alabama faced the question of whether an unborn child being kept in a cryogenic nursery is entitled to status as a person under Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.

As CNN reports:

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall weighed in on the issue on Friday. Marshall said he “has no intention of using the recent Alabama Supreme Court decision as a basis for prosecuting IVF families or providers,” in a statement from Chief Counsel Katherine Robertson.

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Marshall’s statement comes a week after the state Supreme Court ruling embryos – whether they’re within or out of a uterus – are children and would be protected under Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, which allows parents to sue for punitive damages when their child dies.

Meanwhile, Democrats in the Alabama state legislature say they’re introducin a bill to falsely claim human embryos are not human beings.

Alabama House Democrats introduced a bill Thursday that would establish fertilized human eggs stored outside a uterus are not considered human beings under state law.

As CNN reprots, many IVF clinics have halted their practices.

Already, at least three fertility clinics in Alabama have halted certain IVF treatment programs amid concerns their medical personnel could be at legal risk.

The ruling “has sadly left us with no choice but to pause IVF treatments for patients,” the Center for Reproductive Medicine at Mobile Infirmary said in a statement Thursday, noting it will halt treatments on Saturday “to prepare embryos for transfer.”

Earlier Thursday, Alabama Fertility’s Birmingham clinic said it had “paused transfers of embryos for at least a day or two.”

And the University of Alabama at Birmingham health system said Wednesday it was halting IVF treatment due to legal concerns for its patients and doctors.

Despite the ruloing, IVF treatment is not banned in Alabama.

What is accurate is that the case involves wrongful death where human embryos were erroneously destroyed at a fertility clinic and the question in the case is about whether it can be held accountable in a civil suit.

The case involves a wrongful death lawsuit brought by three couples involving the death of their frozen embryos at an IVF clinic. The deaths were caused by a clinic patient who wandered into the cryogenic nursery and tampered with an unsecured freezer resulting in the embryos being dropped on the floor. The couples are suing Mobile Infirmary, Inc.’s Center for Reproductive Medicine for wrongful death, negligence, and wantonness seeking damages for mental anguish and emotional distress.

In April 2022, the Mobile County Circuit Court dismissed the case before it could go to a discovery phase and summary judgment stating that a frozen embryo is not a “minor child” under Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. However, the ruling to reverse that decision by the state supreme court allows the wrongful death suit to move forward at the circuit court level.

The Supreme Court of Alabama held that such unborn children were entitled to status as a person. “Under existing black-letter law, the answer to that question is no: the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location.” (emphasis added). “[T]he relevant statutory text is clear: the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act applies on its face to all unborn children, without limitation.” (“Unborn children are ‘children’ under the Act, without exception based on developmental stage, physical location, or any other ancillary characteristics.”).

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