Two more clinics in Alabama pausing IVF treatments after court ruling

Two more clinics in Alabama will pause in vitro fertilization treatment after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled this week that frozen embryos are children under state law.

Alabama Fertility Specialists in Birmingham announced its decision Thursday on Facebook.

“We have made the impossibly difficult decision to hold new IVF treatments due to the legal risk to our clinic and our embryologists," the clinic wrote.

The clinic said it's contacting patients whose care was abruptly paused to find options and potential solutions. It also notified the public that it's working to contact legislators to explain the “negative impact of this ruling on the women of Alabama.”

The clinic added that it is not closing and will “continue to fight for our patients and the families of Alabama.”

In Mobile, the Center for Reproductive Medicine at Mobile Infirmary said it will pause IVF procedures effective Saturday and “prepare embryos for transfer.” Mark Nix, president and CEO of its parent company, Infirmary Health, said the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling “sadly” left it without any other option.

“We understand the burden this places on deserving families who want to bring babies into this world and who have no alternative options for conceiving," he said in a statement.

On Wednesday, the largest hospital in Alabama, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, announced that its division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility has paused IVF procedures as it assesses the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision that a “cryopreserved embryo” is a child.

The court decision has drawn bipartisan disapproval. At the POLITICO Governors Summit on Thursday, Republican Govs. Brian Kemp of Georgia, Bill Lee of Tennessee and Chris Sununu of New Hampshire said they approved of the treatment.

President Joe Biden, a Democrat, condemned the decision as "outrageous and unacceptable," and said it is a "direct result of the overturning of Roe v. Wade" abortion protections by the Supreme Court in 2022.

During a roundtable in Grand Rapids, Michigan on "the fight for reproductive freedoms," Vice President Kamala Harris went further by blaming former President Donald Trump.

“When you look at the fact that the previous president of the United States was clear in his intention to handpick three Supreme Court justices who would overturn the protections of Roe v. Wade, and he did it,” Harris said.

“And that same individual then openly talks about how he is proud of what has resulted,” she said. “Proud of the fact that doctors and nurses can be jailed for giving reproductive care, proud of the fact that so many young women in America now have fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers.“