University of Alabama at Birmingham pauses IVF services after court rules that embryos are children

Less than a week after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos created through in vitro fertilization are considered children, the University of Alabama at Birmingham suspended its IVF treatments so it could consider the legal repercussions of the decision.

"We are saddened that this will impact our patients’ attempt to have a baby through IVF, 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," Hannah Echols, a UAB spokesperson, said in a statement to NBC News.

The practice of IVF involves combining sperm and eggs in a lab to create embryos, then implanting one or more of those embryos in a person’s uterus.

Echols said Wednesday that UAB's Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility continues to offer egg retrieval, the process of collecting eggs from one or both ovaries. But it will no longer fertilize eggs or develop embryos, Echols said.

The university's announcement marks the first major consequence of the court's decision, which has left providers and patients unsure of how to navigate the IVF process.

The Alabama Supreme Court ruled Friday on a case in which a person wandered into an unlocked storage area at a fertility clinic in Mobile, Alabama, and dropped several frozen embryos on the floor.

The court determined that failing to secure that storage area violated the state's Wrongful Death Act — which says an unjustified or negligent act that leads to someone's death is a civil offense — because the frozen embryos were considered human beings.

The ruling “does not appear to create criminal liability for IVF providers in the practice of IVF [or] the creation of