OAN’s Abril Elfi
12:20 PM – Thursday, March 7, 2024
Alabama’s governor has signed legislation into law that is meant to protect IVF doctors from legal liability or repercussions.
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On Wednesday, Governor Kay Ivey (R-Ala.) signed a bill that will protect doctors from legal liability in reference to an Alabama court ruling that had ruled frozen embryos were equivalent to children.
“I am pleased to sign this important, short-term measure into law so that couples in Alabama hoping and praying to be parents can grow their families through IVF,” Ivey said.
Last month, the Alabama Supreme Court decided that three couples could file wrongful death claims on behalf of their “extrauterine children.” The couples were referring to their frozen embryos that had been destroyed, or killed as some would say, in a faulty storage facility incident.
Concerns regarding clinic civil liabilities were raised by the ruling that treated an embryo the same as a child or gestating fetus under the wrongful death statute. Soon after, three large IVF clinics in the state halted their operations.
With immediate effect, the new law protects providers from criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits alleging that they had caused “damage to or death of an embryo” during IVF procedures.
Manufacturers of IVF-related products, such as the nutrient-rich solutions used to grow embryos, can still be sued in civil court, but the amount of damages awarded would be limited to “the price paid for the impacted in vitro cycle.”
Doctors from one of the facilities that paused IVF services said that the bill will now allow them to resume embryo transfers.
“We have some transfers tomorrow and some Friday. This means that we will be able to do embryo transfers and hopefully have more pregnancies and babies in the state of Alabama,” Dr. Mamie McLean said after the vote.
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