Alabama governor signs bill to protect IVF treatments into law

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed a GOP-proposed bill intended to protect in vitro fertilization into law on Wednesday night, following weeks of backlash prompted by a controversial state Supreme Court ruling that embryos are considered children.

The move from Ivey, a Republican, came just moments after Alabama lawmakers passed the measure and sent it to her desk.

“IVF is a complex issue, no doubt, and I anticipate there will be more work to come, but right now, I am confident that this legislation will provide the assurances our IVF clinics need and will lead them to resume services immediately,” Ivey said in a statement.

The swift action by the Republican-dominated Legislature capped a tumultuous weeks-long sprint by lawmakers in the ruby red state sparked by the state Supreme Court’s controversial ruling.

While the legislation enacted late Wednesday fails to answer the core questions prompted by the court’s decision — whether an embryo created by IVF should be treated as a child under Alabama law — the measure’s Republican supporters were hopeful it would serve as a short-term solution that would allow clinics in the state that had halted their services to reopen.

The immediate responses from such clinics were mixed: One said it would resume services this week, while another expressed caution.

The enacted legislation doesn’t define or clarify whether under state law frozen embryos created via IVF have the same rights as children. Rather, the narrowly tailored bill would protect doctors, clinics and other health care personnel who provide IVF treatment and services by offering such workers civil and criminal “immunity.”

The two identical bills in the state Senate and House “provide civil and criminal immunity for death or damage to an embryo to any individual or entity when providing or receiving services related to in vitro fertilization.”

They state that “no action, suit, or criminal prosecution for the damage to or death of an embryo shall be brought or maintained against any individual or entity when providing or receiving services related to in vitro fertilization.”

During debates in both chambers on Tuesday, lawmakers removed the term “goods” from the phrase “goods or services” from the bills, meaning that companies that provide items that are integral to the IVF process could still face civil suits — but not criminal prosecution — if their products are determined to damage or destroy embryos. The amended bills also cap the monetary awards in such suits at the price that patients paid for the affected IVF cycle.

Reproductive rights advocates have said providers of such goods could, most prominently, include the liquid solution clinics use to help grow embryos.

Those groups criticized the bill, saying it failed to fully protect IVF care against the broader issues the ruling raised.

Barbara Collura, the president of RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association, said in a statement that while her group was “relieved that Alabama clinics can reopen their IVF programs,” the “legislation does not address the underlying issue of the status of embryos as part of the IVF process — threatening the long-term standard of care for IVF patients.”

“There is more work to be done,” Collura said.

The bill “falls far short of what Alabamans want and need to access fertility care in their state without fear,” said Karla Torres, senior counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights.

“Even on its face, this bill seeks to grant personhood to embryos, reinforcing the state Supreme Court’s extreme ruling recognizing embryos as children,” Torres said, adding that the legislation amounted to “backpedaling in the face of state  and nationwide public outcry to allow politicians to save face.”

Nevertheless, in interviews with NBC News, doctors from at least one fertility clinic in the state signaled, ahead of the bill being signed, that they were prepared to resume embryo transfers and other care as soon as Thursday.

“We believe that it provides the protections that we need to start care, or resume care,” Dr. Janet Bouknight, who practices at Alabama Fertility — one of the clinics in the state that paused IVF after the ruling — said of the identical Senate and House bills.

But officials at UAB, which had also halted care, expressed caution.

“While UAB is moving to promptly resume IVF treatments, we will continue to assess developments and advocate for protections for IVF patients and providers,” Hannah Echols, a UAB spokesperson, said in a statement to NBC News.

The votes Wednesday followed multiple hearings over the past few weeks featuring hours of emotional and tense debate among lawmakers in the state, who, despite broad objections to the proposals, repeatedly voted overwhelmingly to continue advancing them.

During discussions last week about the bills, pro-reproductive rights Democrats joined anti-abortion Republicans in criticizing the bill for failing to explicitly clarify whether an embryo created by IVF should be treated as a child under Alabama law.

Democrats had sought language clarifying that embryos were not children under the law, while some Republicans had argued for “personhood” language establishing that they were. Democrats in the GOP-controlled Legislature had proposed their own bills that sought to explicitly clarify that embryos “outside of the uterus” are not “considered an unborn child,” though those bills didn’t advance.

The bills’ Republican supporters have repeatedly said that the legislation is imperfect and is intended as a quick fix designed to allow the several IVF clinics in the state that closed after the ruling to reopen without fear of criminal prosecution or civil suits for its employees.

In her statement after signing the bill, Ivey called it a “short-term measure” that could allow “couples in Alabama hoping and praying to be parents” to “grow their families through IVF.”

Her signature — at least for now — caps weeks of national blowback prompted by the state court’s decision that embryos created through in vitro fertilization are considered children. 

Specifically, the Alabama Supreme Court found that people can be held legally responsible for destroying embryos under a state wrongful death law declaring that an unjustified or negligent act leading to a person’s death is a civil offense. As a result, providers of IVF services and embryo transport could have faced repercussions if embryos are discarded — a common part of the IVF process, because some embryos can have genetic abnormalities or may no longer be needed.

The February ruling immediately prompted several IVF clinics in the state to halt their services and gave rise to broader concerns that anti-reproductive rights conservatives elsewhere could go after the medical procedure.

The decision triggered a massive outcry against Republicans in Alabama and across the U.S. who have opposed reproductive rights — including calls from former President Donald Trump to address the issue “quickly” — sending lawmakers in the state scrambling to come up with a fix.