Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall will not use last week’s controversial IVF decision to litigate hospitals or patients following the state’s recent decision that has reverberated across the country.
The Alabama Supreme Court ruled last Friday that frozen embryos are "children" and deserve the same legal rights as other "unborn children."
“Attorney General Steve Marshall has no intention of using the recent Alabama Supreme Court decision as a basis for prosecuting IVF families or providers,” chief counsel Katherine Robertson said in a statement.
The case originated in 2021 when a patient at The Center for Reproductive Medicine in Mobile, Alabama, wandered into the area where embryos are stored and dropped several containers. Three couples whose embryos were destroyed sued the facility, but a circuit court judge dismissed the case because embryos at the time were not covered under Alabama's "Wrongful Death of a Minor Act."
The fallout from the decision has had providers and politicians scrambling to react accordingly. GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump expressed his strong support for IVF, saying “Under my leadership, the Republican Party will always support the creation of strong, thriving, healthy American families. We want to make it easier for mothers and fathers to have babies, not harder!”
Meanwhile, the White House opposed the ruling as well saying it was “exactly the type of chaos that we expected when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and paved the way for politicians to dictate some of the most personal decisions families can make.”
Alabama’s largest hospital announced earlier this week that it will no longer be shipping any embryos out of state or to another facility after saying it was pausing IVF treatments, according to ABC News. University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital released a statement saying: “We understand some patients wish to transport their embryos to another facility. Companies that transport embryos are also assessing the risks associated with the Alabama Supreme Court ruling, and we are working to identify a company that is able and willing as soon as possible.”