The Dangers of Alabama's IVF Decision

Recently, Alabama's Supreme Court ruled that embryos created by In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) should have the same rights and protections as a person. This impacts a wide variety of IVF procedures, which have become a cornerstone of US fertility treatments. This process involves generating multiple embryos from a given pair of parents who might have difficulty conceiving naturally, and genetically screening the embryos to find those most likely to survive to term. The optimal embryo is implanted in the mother and the others are frozen in case the first one fails, which it very often does. Since these frozen embryos are discarded or potentially donated to stem cell research after a baby is born, the new ruling essentially makes IVF illegal. In response, the Alabama state legislature has since passed a variety of protections for IVF that allow clinics to resume services. However, this new legislation does not provide clarity on whether or not embryos are still considered people, which will likely lead to an increase in both the number and strength of wrongful death suits regarding fertilized eggs. The ambiguity of the new protections also makes running an IVF clinic or keeping embryos in Alabama extremely risky, because no one is sure precisely what the state intends to allow and what might be prosecuted after the fact. 

On an emotional and personal level, this ruling is vile. Without IVF, I simply never could have existed. The same is true for millions of people worldwide. The idea that healthcare workers might be criminally or civilly prosecuted for destroying what amounts to a tiny clump of cells without any bodily functions is immoral and poses a long-term threat to the freedom of these healthcare workers. As someone who was once a tiny clump of cells that had to be screened for the purposes of IVF, I was no more a human then than I was when my genetic code was split between my parents or even before that. The restriction of such a critical, safe biotechnology that allows so many couples to have children is completely unnecessary and a squandering of the scientific progress humanity has made over the past several decades.

From a scientific perspective, this ruling is extremely concerning. While we are far more capable of stem cell research without embryonic stem cells now than in previous times, embryonic stem cells are still necessary in some situations. Moreover, they are still considered the “gold standard” due to being the most capable naturally occurring pluripotent stem cells and are necessary to collect data from as a point of comparison with artificial stem cells. Luckily, most legislation currently attempting to classify embryos as people for the purposes of liability are within states with incredibly minuscule shares of biotechnological research. The halting of Alabama’s stem cell research does not pose any major national threat. However, if embryos were classified as human, the rate of stem cell donation in the United States might substantially decrease. If this were to somehow occur nationwide, research in the United States in this field would halt. 

The logic behind the Supreme Court decision is also disconcerting—Bible verses were quoted directly in the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court’s Opinion. Furthermore, said Chief Justice already indicated that the protections Alabama attempted to pass for IVF are in danger of being struck down by the court because these protections “would be unacceptable to the people of this state, who have required us to treat every human being in accordance with the fear of a Holy God who made them in his image.” This theocratic language appearing in a Supreme Court decision obliterates the separation of church and state critical to the very essence of our nation.

Unfortunately, it seems rather likely that instead of stopping with Alabama, similar restrictions based almost completely on religion will make their way to other states. Thirteen states have already introduced personhood bills that would legislatively define embryos as people, including embryos created as part of the IVF process. Since these bills would already work in the legislative branch, it is unlikely that they would be undermined in a similar way to the Alabama court decision and would leave as much ambiguity as the current Alabama legislature, even if they did. The only way to prevent the disaster in Alabama from becoming the new norm for tens of millions of people across the Bible Belt is to prevent these laws and rulings from occurring in the first place. We should all vote for candidates promising to protect the right to IVF and to oppose the classification of embryos as fully developed people. Voters should also support the removal of judges who quote the Bible or any religious text on the basis of separation of Church and State and should vote for judges who promise to rule only predicated on secular reasoning. If our nation fails to do this, the long-term consequences will be dire.