CV NEWS FEED // The Republican supermajority in both houses of the Alabama legislature overwhelmingly passed bills to provide the state’s in-vitro fertilization (IVF) industry with legal immunity Thursday.
The legislation came less than two weeks after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos conceived via IVF are children with human rights under state law.
Although the ruling did not explicitly prohibit IVF in the state, defenders of the controversial practice claimed it effectively did.
Reports indicate that several IVF facilities in Alabama “paused” operations in the wake of the landmark decision.
The Alabama House passed the pro-IVF HB 237 by the near-unanimous margin of 96-to-4. Three members abstained from the vote. The vast majority of the state’s House Republicans voted in favor of the bill.
CNN indicated that a “companion bill in the [Alabama] Senate, SB 159, passed” unanimously, “with a vote of 34-0.”
According to PBS, the legislation “would extend lawsuit protections to [IVF] clinics.”
HB 237 “would shield providers from prosecution and civil lawsuits ‘for providing goods or services related to [IVF] except for an act or omission that is both intentional and not arising from or related to IVF services,” PBS continued.
The House bill’s sponsor, Rep. Terri Collins, R-AL, said HB 237 “would at least keep the clinics open and the families moving forward.”
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Per CNN, both Collins and SB 159 sponsor Sen. Tim Melson, R-AL, “said the goal of the [bills] is to get IVF clinics to reopen right away.”
Collins stated: “This addresses the imminent problem.”
Melson agreed, noting the bills serve as “the temporary fix.”
“This gets the ladies now currently in the situation, that are in limbo, back in the clinic,” he said during a House floor speech he gave in favor of SB 159’s passage.
PBS reported that Rep. Ernie Yarbrough, R-AL, “tried unsuccessfully to put an amendment on the [House] bill that would prohibit clinics from intentionally discarding embryos that are unused or after genetic testing.”
The House voted to table Yarbrough’s amendment by a margin of 65-26, with six abstentions.
Collins was among the members who voted to table the amendment.
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CatholicVote Director of Governmental Affairs Tom McClusky attributed the amendment’s failure to “total ignorance” on the part of the legislators, adding that Alabama Republicans were “acting out of fear.”
“This means if the IVF industry implants the wrong embryo into the wrong woman, the IVF industry is exempt,” McClusky explained. “If the industry sells off a couple’s embryos for experiments, it can not be sued.”.
McClusky said Collins’ bill will cover for the multi-billion dollar IVF industry.
“It is not about protecting women or children,” he said. “It’s just the opposite.”
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Prior to her introduction of HB 237, Collins had been widely regarded as one of Alabama’s most pro-life legislators.
Back in 2019, she introduced the Human Life Protection Act, which made almost all abortions in the state illegal. That same year, Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed the bill into law. It went into effect three years later, following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.
