The nation’s highest court will not hear an appeal involving an Alabama fertility clinic and a frozen embryo it allegedly destroyed. The legal case was part of an Alabama Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos are children. The decision created a political shock wave with Republican lawmakers trying to protect fertility treatment for couples while maintain a pro-life stance. GOP U.S. Senators voted against protections for clinics, calling a Democratic bill a stunt.
The Alabama state court decision in February sparked a national backlash and concerns about legal liability for fertility clinics. In the wake of the decision, several large fertility providers in Alabama paused IVF services. After Alabama lawmakers approved immunity protections from future lawsuits, the providers resumed services.
The Center for Reproductive Medicine and Mobile Infirmary Medical Center in August filed a petition asking justices to review whether the couple could bring the lawsuit and if the decision to let the lawsuit proceed ran afoul of constitutional protections of due process and fair notice rights.
"In an astonishing decision, and ignoring over 150 years of the statute's interpretive history, the Supreme Court of Alabama held here that an unimplanted, in vitro embryo constitutes a 'minor child' for purposes of the statute, upending the commonsense understanding of the statute around which many Alabamians, including Petitioners, have ordered their businesses and lives," lawyers for the two medical providers wrote.
The wrongful death lawsuit brought by the couple is ongoing. Two other couples, who had been part of the earlier case, dropped their lawsuits after reaching settlement agreements.
