U.S. President Joe Biden responded Thursday to the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that said frozen embryos are legally children.
“Make no mistake: This is a direct result of the overturning of Roe v. Wade,” Biden said in a statement, referencing the overturned Supreme Court case that had protected the right to an abortion since 1973.
“The disregard for women’s ability to make these decisions for themselves and their families is outrageous and unacceptable,” Biden said in the statement.
The effects of the ruling are starting to be felt in Alabama, as patients scramble to make other plans, and IVF clinics cease parts of their treatments. Treatment facilities now face increased risks of their patients or doctors facing wrongful death lawsuits and criminal charges for participating in IVF treatments.
The pauses come after the Alabama court’s ruling in a lawsuit under the state’s 1872 Wrongful Death of a Minor Act against a fertility clinic where frozen embryos were destroyed in an accident at a storage facility.
Three reproductive care facilities in Birmingham stopped providing IVF treatments in the ruling’s wake.
Alabama Fertility Services said in a statement Thursday that the ruling has “made the impossibly difficult decision to hold new IVF treatments due to the legal risk to our clinic and our embryologists.”
The ruling has now placed a burden on families in Alabama who have no other way of conceiving. The decision left Gabby Goidel, who had planned to undergo an egg retrieval, to seek treatment out of state.
“I freaked out. I started crying. I felt in an extreme limbo state. They did not have all the answers. I did not obviously have any answers,” Goidel told The Associated Press.
While some clinics are shutting down, others are continuing to provide treatment. Dr. Brett Davenport at the Fertility Institute of North Alabama said his clinic will keep providing IVF.
“What we do could not be any more pro-life. We’re trying to help couples who can’t otherwise conceive a child,” Davenport told the AP.
He noted that IVF treatment is like the natural conceiving process in a female body where only a fraction of fertilized eggs result in a pregnancy.
Republican Senator Tim Melson plans to introduce legislation to safeguard IVF services, proposing legal protections for fertilized eggs once implanted but defining them as “potential life” until then.
“I’m just trying to come up with a solution for the IVF industry and protect the doctors and still make it available for people who have fertility issues that need to be addressed because they want to have a family,” Melson said.
Critics warn of broader implications, suggesting the ruling could deter fertility doctors from practicing in Alabama because of fears of criminal prosecution.
Some information for this report was provided by the Agence France-Presse and The Associated Press.