Two Alabama clinics offering in-vitro fertilization (IVF) services asked the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) last week to take up an appeal of a February ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court.
The Alabama Supreme Court ruled in February an embryo created through IVF is a child protected by Alabama's wrongful death act and the Alabama Constitution.
Attorneys for The Center for Reproductive Medicine and Mobile Infirmary Medical Center called the ruling "unwarranted" last week.
"Petitioners are two Alabama medical providers who have, for years, provided routine but important reproductive health services to Alabamians with the logical expectation that Alabama's civil wrongful death statute did not apply to the disposal of unimplanted embryos, a necessary byproduct of the in vitro fertilization services that Petitioners provide. That expectation changed on February 16, 2024, when the Supreme Court of Alabama held that frozen embryos are "minor children" for purposes of the statute, which imposes punitive penalties on those that negligently cause the 'death' of a minor child," attorneys for the two Alabama clinics said in a petition before SCOTUS last week.
A response to the filing is due by September 4.
The Alabama Supreme Court held in a 7-2 decision that parents of frozen embryos killed at an IVF clinic when an intruder tampered with an IVF freezer could proceed with a wrongful death lawsuit. The ruling received national media coverage and is still mentioned in political races across the country.
The Court also held that the Alabama Constitution's Sanctity of Life Amendment, ratified by Alabama voters and made law in 2018, would require the Court to interpret the law in favor of protecting the unborn. Alabama's Sanctity of Life Amendment declares in the state Constitution that it is "the public policy of this state to recognize and support the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children, including the right to life."
In response to the state's Supreme Court ruling, the legislature passed into law a bill providing civil and criminal immunity to IVF clinics for death or damage to embryos.
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