Alabama Supreme Court ruling classes frozen embryos as children

The Alabama Supreme Court has declared that frozen embryos have the same legal status as children in the state.

The ruling was made by the court following an appeal by three couples pursuing a lawsuit against the Mobile Infirmary Clinic in Alabama, after their frozen embryos were inadvertently destroyed by a patient who entered the storage area. A Circuit Court judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2022 ruling that frozen embryos were not covered under Alabama's Wrongful Death of a Minor Act (see BioNews 1208), as they were not children. That decision has been overturned in the latest ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court which found the Act applied 'to all unborn children, regardless of their location', inside or outside of the 'biological' uterus.

The decision has far-reaching consequences for IVF providers and patients, with some clinics in Alabama pausing IVF treatments and one hospital reporting trouble finding shipping companies willing to transport embryos in and out of the state ABC News reported. Dr Mamie McLean, a fertility specialist at Alabama Fertility told the Guardian newspaper: 'Our legal team is telling us that, as the ruling is written, that modern fertility treatments cannot continue in the state of Alabama because of the risk to physicians and embryologists, given that embryos are now considered children'.

The Alabama Supreme Court justices cited Bible verses and Christian theological texts in their judgment, as a justification for their decision, which is the first of its kind in the US.

It is expected that access to abortion will become an increasingly important political issue ahead of Presidential elections this year in the US, and many are linking the decision to a discussion surrounding wider reproductive rights.

US President Joe Biden commented in a statement that the Court's decision 'put access to some fertility treatments at risk for families who are desperately trying to get pregnant.' He also said the decision was a 'direct result of the overturning of Roe v. Wade' by former President Donald Trump's Supreme Court of the United States' justices.

Trump, who is running to be the Republican party presidential candidate, said that he supported 'the availability of fertility treatments like IVF in every state in America' in a post on his Truth Social network, the Washington Times reported. He said: 'Under my leadership, the Republican Party will always support the creation of strong, thriving, healthy American families. We want to make it easier for mothers and fathers to have babies, not harder!'

Chief legal officer and general counsel for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Molly Meegan, told the Guardian that she expected confusion about how to implement the decision would make IVF 'either completely unavailable or too expensive for most patients' in Alabama.