Feb. 29 (UPI) — The Alabama House of Representatives on Thursday passed legislation to protect access to in vitro fertilization in the wake of a controversial state Supreme Court ruling that embryos are children.
The House voted 94-6 with three abstentions. The bill will go on to the state Senate, which expects to vote Thursday afternoon.
The process could take a week before Gov. Kay Ivey would sign the bill into law.
After the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling earlier this month, roughly half of the state’s IVF clinics suspended those services for fear of wrongful death lawsuits or criminal charges for discarding unused embryos, a routine part of IVF.
The House bill, if enacted, would provide civil and criminal immunity “for death or damage” to an embryo as part of IVF treatment.
Rep. Terri Collins, R-Decatur, who co-sponsored the bill, said it is not a longterm solution and is meant only to allow clinics to resume helping families.
Collins speculated the state legislature could revisit the issue next year with a constitutional amendment that would be on the ballot in November.
Over a dozen lawmakers debated for more than two-and-a-half hours prior to the vote. The bill passed with bipartisan support, with four Democrats and two Republicans voting against it.
The debate in the Alabama legislature comes after Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., blocked passage of a bill that would protect access to IVF on the federal level.
Hyde-Smith argued the bill “would subject religious and pro-life organizations to crippling lawsuits.”
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., who introduced the bill, used IVF for two of her children. She argued Alabama’s ruling would have forced her to miscarry three nonviable embryo or potentially face criminal charges.
“That’s the kind of future that we’re fighting to prevent — where frozen embryos have more rights than the women who would carry them,” she said.
