Alabama lawmakers passed IVF immunity legislation
The Alabama Immunity Law in Light of the Alabama Supreme Court Decision Deciding Embryostatality is Children with a Constitutional Right to Life
There is a question as to how the anti- abortion movement will react to the Republican attempts to sideline it. A Senate candidate in Arizona who once said abortion was the ultimate sin came out against both the federal and Arizona abortion ban in response to the court case.
Some of the movement’s most well-known figures signed a letter to the governor urging her to veto the bill. Scientists and logic agree that embryology should be treated like every other human being at every stage of life, with the same rights and dignity.
That Legislature is close to passing a bill that would protect I.V.F. patients and providers from legal liability for embryo damage or destruction. But the anti-abortion movement, it turns out, is not willing to easily give up on fetal personhood and all its implications.
The bill’s sponsors in the Alabama House and Senate claim this immunity bill is just a stop-gap measure to allow fertility treatments to resume while lawmakers address the remaining questions raised by the court ruling, which could take a while to work out.
The state Supreme Court’s ruling that frozen embryos are “children” with a constitutional right to life caused many clinics to pause their IVF services last month.
The law provides some protections and that will allow the University of Alabama at Burlingame to resume in-veterinary fertilization treatments.
Another IVF provider told NPR earlier in the day they had already scheduled patients for embryo transfers on Thursday in anticipation of the immunity law’s enactment.
Bringing an End to Life: The Alabama Immunity Bill and a Ring-Aid to Defend Families in the Pregnant Era
“They’re hearing us loud and clear that this affects Alabama families,” says Corinn O’Brien, with the Fight for Alabama Families Coalition. She’s one of hundreds of advocates who have been lobbying at the statehouse, and says that effort- plus over 20 thousand emails- ramped up pressure on Alabama lawmakers to take action.
O’Brien sympathizes with those who were in the middle of their treatment when the court ruling was made, as she is herself pregnant with her first child.
Tim Melson, the doctor who sponsored the legislation, thinks there’s too much difference of opinion on when life begins.
During the floor debate, Melson admitted the legislation leaves many unanswered questions, like whether an embryo frozen for three decades before implantation would be considered 30 years old at birth.
Melson told NPR that he originally intended his bill to define personhood, but removed that language in order to smooth the bill’s passage. Still, he argued, his immunity bill accomplishes the short term goal of allowing people to resume treatment without fear that another change to state law could lead to future prosecution.
Rep. Terri Collins, whose identical House immunity bill made it through a vote just three days after being introduced, stressed to her colleagues that the bill is a necessary legislative Band-Aid.
“We are providing with this legislation a pretty broad immunity at this moment in time which to me gives us the impetus to continue to work on this issue for a long term fix,” she said.
Democratic state Rep. Chris England worried that once an immunity bill is signed, lawmakers will lose their sense of urgency and fail to revisit the question of embryonic personhood.
England said that the immunity would help shield them from being sued, because there is an issue of pausing the clinics. He told his colleagues to add personhood language to the bill.
“Our temporary solution here is akin to turning a water hose on a burning tree in a forest that’s on fire,” England said, emphasizing that the immunity bill does nothing to address a minefield of remaining legal questions, like whether doctors who destroy an embryo outside of IVF services could face homicide charges, or whether the state is now required take custody of abandoned frozen embryos.
Yarbrough advocated keeping the pause on fertility treatments to make sure no one endorsed the destruction of children’s lives.
In a speech that included quotes from the Bible, the TV show Reacher, and the lyrics of 90’s rapper Vanilla Ice, Yarbrough introduced an amendment to the bill to add that “immunity will not be provided to a person who intentionally causes the death of an unborn child.”
The bill made it through as a piece of legislation, despite the amendment that would have effectively nullified the immunity bill being voted down.
The US state of Alabama has introduced a bill to grant immunity from criminal prosecution to doctors who use frozen embryos for in vitro fertilisation (IVF). This comes after Alabama’s Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children with a constitutional right to life. However, the lawmakers argued that the immunity bill is just a temporary solution and not a permanent one.