Alabama’s IVF ruling is already preventing people from having children: ‘Our lives are upended’

Scott and his wife had gone through the arduous process of in vitro fertilisation once before. The couple, from Mobile in Alabama, have a young child who would not exist without the treatment.

Nearly two years after their first, and after many long conversations, they decided this month that they were ready to grow their family again, using the remaining embryos they had frozen and stored with their IVF clinic.

But just as the couple were about to start the procedure, Alabama’s Supreme Court issued a ruling that threatens the future of their family, and of IVF treatment in the state.

“It’s really terrifying to wake up one morning thinking about having a second child within a year or so, and then the next morning you’re virtually upending your life,” Scott, who asked for only his first name to be used, told The Independent.

“We didn’t ask to be infertile, but here we are,” he added.

Their ordeal began last week when Alabama’s highest court issued a shock ruling that classified frozen embryos as unborn children. That definition is not one shared by scientists but is promoted by Christian fundamentalists and anti-abortion campaigners who believe that life begins at conception.

The ruling stems from a 2020 case in which a patient destroyed several embryos at an IVF clinic in Alabama. The three families who owned the embryos filed a wrongful death lawsuit, but it was thrown out by a lower court, which said the case related to property. The state’s Supreme Court overturned that ruling, declaring that the embryos were “children” and a wrongful death lawsuit could proceed.

In the majority opinion, Justice Jay Mitchell referred to the frozen embryos as “extrauterine children” and said that the state’s wrongful death law applies