HUNTSVILLE — A Huntsville reproductive endocrinology and infertility specialist has advice for families that are going through or planning to go through in vetro fertilization: “Please don’t panic.”
The Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law, a decision critics said could have sweeping implications for fertility treatment in the state.
Dr. Brett Davenport of the Fertility Institute of North Alabama, however, said on Facebook the court was actually upholding state law regarding fetuses.
“There has been a lot questions and a lot of panic regarding the recent judicial ruling from the Alabama State Court which basically noted that embryos are children under Alabama state law,” Davenport said. “The rationale is what the Alabama state law currently says and all (the court’s) doing is upholding state law. This is not so much a ruling as a judge trying to uphold what the Alabama law currently says.
“Alabama state law always referred to life as beginning at conception and that is mainly pertaining to children in utero …”
Dr. Andrew Harper, the medical director of Huntsville Reproductive Medicine, said he was surprised at the decision.
“We’re all shocked, saddened, surprised at the decision rendered by the Alabama Supreme Court,” he said on a Facebook post. “Presently, we have not changed any of our IVF-related practices and policies other than taking a pause on discarding our IVF embryos. We are still proceeding with IVF.
“I want to reassure all our patients, their cryo preserved embryos are theirs and not the ward of the state or church. We will always advocate for our patients.”
Davenport urged his patients not to panic because the ruling won’t affect much of the process except what they do with cryopreserved embryos. He also called for the Legislature to overturn the ruling.
“It is my hope that in the near future that the Alabama Legislature will be able to see that this not at all the intended consequences of the law which was initially intended to protect a fetus’ life,” he said. “It was never intended to extend it to embryos that are 5-7 days old that do not possess any of the characteristics of the fetuses they were trying to protect and hopefully this will be overturned rather speedily at the Legislature level …”
The court’s decision was issued in a pair of wrongful death cases when frozen embryos were accidentally destroyed at a fertility clinic. The justices based their ruling on a 150-year-old law in a case that referred to “all unborn children, regardless of their location.”
“Unborn children are ‘children’ … without exception based on developmental stage, physical location, or any other ancillary characteristics,” Justice Jay Mitchell wrote in the 8-1 ruling by the all-Republican court.
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