MONTGOMERY — At a rally on Thursday, Fight for Alabama Families, an IVF advocacy group, called for Alabama to pass a constitutional amendment offering permanent protection of IVF in the state.
Alabama lawmakers passed legislation in March 2024 providing civil and criminal immunity to IVF clinics for death or damage to embryos, which could be defined as children under the state's wrongful death statute, according to the Alabama Supreme Court.
The Court held in a 7-2 decision last year that parents of frozen embryos killed at an IVF clinic in Mobile when an intruder tampered with a freezer could proceed with a wrongful death lawsuit for alleged negligence. The Court based its decision to protect the unborn on Alabama's Sanctity of Life Amendment, which states "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."
Some clinics briefly paused offering IVF after the Court's decision but resumed after Gov. Kay Ivey signed the immunity law.
Corinn O'Brien, founder of Fight for Alabama Families, said at a press conference on Thursday at the State House, "We're here to say thank you. Thank you to the Alabama Legislature who passed the IVF immunity in five legislative days which is the quickest you can pass a bill in the state of Alabama."
"The law we passed was a short-term solution which has already been challenged in Court. We anticipate more legal challenges to come. This is why we need a constitutional amendment that would protect the right to IVF in our state. We know this is a longer-term battle and that work starts today," O'Brien said. "We also know there has been lots of discussion about regulating IVF, which would be harmful to our families. Burdensome regulations would increase cost and risk and would push families that could afford it to seek IVF services in other states. We are here today to push back on those conversations."
Eric Johnston, president of the Alabama Pro-Life Coalition and author of Alabama's 2019 abortion ban law, told 1819 News on Thursday that legislation regulating IVF clinics "does need to come up at some point."
"I think we can do reasonable regulation and have IVF clinics conform to a proper medical standard of care, which they'd be the ones to set it because they're the experts, but when they do something like let somebody come into a refrigerated room and destroy the embryos that someone expected to use, there ought to be some responsibility for that. I think the legislature overreacted last year because of the pressure of UAB and others. I understand that. Billboard lawyers were probably getting geared up to file hundreds of lawsuits. You had to do something. The Alabama Pro-Life Coalition has met and discussed it, and we don't oppose IVF," Johnston said.
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