Photo: Stew Milne/AP
When the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that fertilized embryos were “extrauterine children,” it did more than imperil the future of in vitro fertilization in Alabama and, potentially, the U.S.
The ruling, on the claimed “wrongful death” of frozen embryos in an accident at a fertility clinic, heightened the conflict between ideology and electability, already about as high as it could get after June 2022, when Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization freed the states to snub overwhelming public opinion, enact radical abortion bans — and then lose badly in the midterms.
But now the ideologues have more than a political problem. They have a moral one too.
When most of Alabama’s fertility clinics suspended operations in fear that dropping a vial might be prosecuted as manslaughter and patients were left anguished in the middle of time-sensitive treatments, the GOP faced the present, palpable harms inflicted on real people by its abstract religious pieties. And these harmed parties were not baby killers. They were among the 1 in 7 women afflicted by infertility, and they were desperate to have babies.
The predicament landed hard. As the national press closed in on the Alabama Legislature, its panicked Republican supermajority hurried through a bill giving full legal and criminal immunity to IVF providers for the death or destruction of embryos. The bill passed the House by a vote of 94 to 6, including most of the chamber’s 27 Democrats, and unanimously in the Senate. Some Democrats objected that the blanket immunity exposed patients to malpractice without recourse, while Republican opponents still wanted protection for the embryos. The GOP’s state PAC defended supporters as casting “a pro-life vote.”
The more radical elements of Alabama’s “pro-life” community did not agree. The American Action Fund posted a petition on Facebook attacking Republican lawmakers who “voted to give immunity to any IVF provider who ‘intentionally causes the death of an unborn child,’” putting quotation marks around a phrase that is not in the statute and pressing for repeal. D.J. Parten, founder of a group that crafted legislation to prosecute self-managed abortion as murder, called the IVF legislation the “immunity for murder” bill. Eric Johnston, president of the Alabama Pro-Life Coalition and author of the state’s abortion ban, told AL.com that he’d contacted the Senate pro tempore to work out the next steps, which sounded like a reversal. “If [embryos] are destroyed,” Johnston said, “there needs to be some repercussions for that.” Then what for IVF? He didn’t say.
And while the Republicans were busy biting each other’s backs, Democratic candidate Marilyn Lands walked away with a special election for a vacant state House seat. Having focused her campaign on abortion rights, she added the threat to IVF. On March 26, she beat her opponent 2 to 1.
The battle moved north to Capitol Hill. Illinois Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth introduced a bill to protect “access to assisted reproductive technology, and all medical care surrounding such technology.” A Republican senator blocked the bill because it imperiled embryos, and it died on the floor.
House Republicans released a 2025 budget containing the Life at Conception Act, which would grant full legal rights “from the moment of fertilization.” It had 120 sponsors. The Senate version made an exception for IVF, but the senators couldn’t sway the lower chamber. The Republican National Committee urged candidates to come out strongly for fertility care.
Conflict churned, not just between religious morality and political reality, but also between Republicans crusading to deregulate everything public — from greenhouse gas emissions to payday lenders — and Republicans pouring their hearts and political capital into regulating everything personal, particularly what people do with their bodies.
At least one prominent player tried to split the difference. The fiercely anti-regulation Heritage Foundation released a position paper titled “Why the IVF Industry Must Be Regulated.”
“You cannot support IVF and support fetal personhood.
It is clear that no one is being fooled here. One of the prominent families mentioned in the article is John and Marlene Strege, along with their child Hannah, who was the first “snowflake baby” born on New Year’s Eve, 1998.
The Streges continue to be actively involved in the ongoing debate. In 2021, the family, consisting of Hannah S. as “a former IVF frozen embryo,” and John and Marlene S. as “adoptive parents of the first ‘adopted’ frozen embryo in America,” filed an amicus brief in Dobbs in support of Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban. The Supreme Court’s decision on this matter has raised concerns about the potential future where cells in petri dishes could have more rights than the individuals who give them life. This shift could limit access to crucial medical procedures and products that millions rely on to exercise their human right to have a baby or not.
The article also includes a Twitter widget at the end.
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