Under state law, frozen embryos are children and for the time being fertility clinics in the state, as well as couples like Susan and her husband Billy Clark who are seeking to have a child through in vitro fertilization (IVF) will henceforth be left in limbo.
The unprecedented ruling renews a debate over the abortion issue, which has been carried back and forth in the country since the U.S. Supreme Court back in June 2022 overturned a landmark ruling providing legal protection for reproductive rights.
Clark (a name she asked to use in this interview with Prensa Latina), is one of many women who do not achieve pregnancy and who seek all possible options with the only hope of becoming a mother.
But now, both she and Billy, who have been married for 13 years, have doubts “because of some reports following the Alabama´s Supreme Court´s ruling that could affect their IVF reatments.
Clark began her IVF treatment six years ago, got pregnant.
“We were all so happy, but I lost my baby in the first three months and then I had a health complication with my husband that forced us to postpone our plans.
We have two frozen embryos left, she said in this exercise that “hurts a lot, because we think we would make excellent parents, but life is playing a trick on us.”
Clark, born in July 1978, said there are more important things than anything material. She commented that professionally she and her husband have been successful, but “I would trade it all for a child.”
Alabama´s high court concluded that those who destroy frozen embryos can be liable for wrongful death, so it has shocked the reproductive medicine world.
The ruling also raised some questions about fertility care for soon-to-be parents and posed complex legal questions with far-reaching implications extending beyond Alabama, The New York Times reported.
On Tuesday, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said the Alabama ruling would cause “exactly the kind of chaos we expected when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and paved the way for politicians to dictate some of the most personal decisions families can make.”
The spokeswoman reiterated the call by President Joe Biden’s administration for Congress to codify the Roe v. Wade protections into federal law.
“As a reminder, this is the same state whose attorney general threatened to prosecute people who help women travel out of state to seek healthcare they need,” she added, referring to Alabama, which began enforcing a total abortion ban in June 2022.
The justices issued the ruling on Friday in appeals cases brought by couples whose embryos were destroyed in 2020 when a hospital patient removed frozen embryos from liquid nitrogen tanks in Mobile and dropped them on the floor, the newspaper added.
The justices’ majority opinion referenced anti-abortion passages in the state constitution and mentioned that an 1872 statute allowing parents to sue for the reckless homicide of a minor child applies to unborn children.
Reproductive medicine scientists also criticized the conclusion and warned that it was a “medically and scientifically unfounded decision.”
For couples like Susan and Billy’s who took on grueling and expensive infertility treatments in Alabama there is concern and fear that clinics will begin to close.
Currently five pets are running around the house, three Chihuahuas and two dachshunds.
pll/rgh/dfm
