What’s next for women undergoing IVF in Alabama?

Natalie Brumfield, 41, cried as she read about the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that embryos in test tubes should be considered children. Mrs. Brumfield, a mother of seven children, including two babies conceived through in vitro fertilization, felt like one of her cherished beliefs as a Christian had been confirmed: Life, she said, begins when embryos form.

Emily Capilouto, 36, also cried over the ruling, but her tears were motivated by despair. She had fought for years to have a child. Now she was nearing the end of an IVF cycle, when one of the embryos she and her husband had produced would be transferred to her uterus. But on Wednesday, she learned that her clinic at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s health care system was halting IVF treatments in response to the ruling.

“I don’t know now what this means,” Ms. Capilouto said Wednesday, minutes after learning that her dream of having a child would be put on hold indefinitely.

Questions like hers are echoing throughout the country after the court’s ruling, which was handed down on February 16. The possible national implications remain unclear, but many women in Alabama are wondering how this new classification for embryos — one rooted in religious belief — will happen. impact their own journey to motherhood, a process that is already filled with emotional and physical pain for many who seek IVF.

In interviews Wednesday, a number of women in Alabama who recently underwent in vitro fertilization or were in the middle of treatment said they felt abruptly left in the dark.

Some who recently had children through IVF said they were afraid to do anything with their extra embryos from the process, which are stored frozen in facilities across the state.

Others wondered whether they would now have to pay a significant sum to permanently store their embryos, even those with chromosomal abnormalities that would lead to miscarriage if transplanted. And they wondered: Would throwing away unused embryos, or even moving them out of state, lead to criminal charges?

“Declaring embryos children is dismissing what people go through to hold a baby in their arms,” said Veronica Wehby-Upchurch, 41, who has a son and two frozen embryos in storage. “An embryo in a dish is not even the starting line, and a pink line on a pregnancy test is not the finish line.”

Ms. Wehby-Upchurch, who lives in Homewood, Alabama, said she had joked with friends who had also undergone IVF about whether she should now report her frozen embryos on her income tax returns and her health insurance. Because of the court’s ruling, she said, “the questions are not crazy.”

Women who hold anti-abortion views, like Ms. Brumfield, said the ruling reflected the values ​​enshrined in Proverbs 31-8: “Speak up for those who have no voice,” Ms. Brumfield said, adding that she was relieved that the decision would prevent embryos from being destroyed.

The irony, some women said, is that the ruling, the consequences of which are still being assessed by fertility clinics, has forced many couples to pause their IVF treatments and suspend their ticket to parenthood. The University of Alabama at Birmingham said in a statement Wednesday that it was halting the procedures to “evaluate the potential that our patients and our physicians could face criminal charges or damages for following the standard of care for IVF treatments. ”

Another provider, Alabama Fertility Specialists in Mountain Brook, outside Birmingham, said said Thursday that it “would not offer any new IVF treatments due to the legal risk to our clinic and our embryologists.”

Kayla Lee, 33, of Birmingham, said she spent nine years, $80,000 and dozens of hours in doctors’ offices to have a child. After several miscarriages, it took a few days before a viable embryo was finally transferred. But on Tuesday evening, Ms Lee received a shocking phone call.

The doctor at Ms Lee’s clinic at the University of Alabama at Birmingham said IVF treatments had to be suspended because of the ruling.

“I’m so sorry,” the doctor said to Ms. Lee, who held the phone to her cheek and cried, furious that a court decision to protect lives had caused her to lose her chance to create one, at least for now .

“This is my life, this is my body,” Ms. Lee said, her voice breaking. She added: “It’s not our fault we can’t reproduce without help.”

Kate Choban Gilbreath, 37, who lives in San Juan, PR, said she completed her in vitro treatments at Mobile Infirmary’s Center for Reproductive Medicine. That was where the plaintiffs in the Alabama lawsuit — several couples who had undergone IVF — had embryos stored until a hospital patient removed them from tanks of liquid nitrogen and dropped them on the floor, destroying them.

The majority opinion in this case said a state statute that allows parents to sue for the wrongful death of a child also applies to “unborn children.”

The centre announced Thursday that she would also stop IVF treatments from Saturday.

Ms. Gilbreath, who has an eight-month-old daughter, said she signed the paperwork late last year authorizing the Mobile center to discard her remaining embryos, and now felt she had avoided the dilemma faced by other couples now face. .

Ms Gilbreath and many of the other women interviewed for this article said that while they were angry about the court’s ruling, they also felt enormous empathy for the couples involved in the case.

“That’s horrible, that someone got into the storage room and destroyed their embryos,” said Julie Cohen, 38, of Mountain Brook. Although she felt very attached to her own embryos, she added, “All my embryos have the potential of babies, but they are not babies yet.”

Ms Cohen said she was terrified by the ruling and the questions couples could soon face over issues such as what rights they have over their embryos.

AshLeigh Dunham, a lawyer in Birmingham who specializes in cases involving assisted reproductive technology, recently had a daughter through IVF treatment. Ms. Dunham said her clients who were interested in so-called embryo adoption – which acquired embryos from couples who had produced them through IVF but not used them – had called her in a panic this week, asking questions to which no one yet knows the answers. Will Alabama Allow Embryos to Leave the State? Do fertility clinics still want to operate in Alabama?

“We’re losing doctors, we’re losing clinics, we’re losing research,” Ms. Dunham said. “And those who can possibly afford it are going elsewhere.”

Still, Ms. Brumfield said her condition was moving in the right direction. She looked to her daughter Eloise, 4, as proof that preserving all the embryos was worth it. Her embryo had been given a poor grade, she said, but had nevertheless developed into a fetus and eventually a healthy child, which Mrs. Brumfield called “my strongest baby ever.”

Ms. Capilouto said she feared she would not get another chance to become a mother through in vitro fertilization in Alabama.

When she discovered on Wednesday that her treatment had been stopped, she fell to the floor in distress and called her mother, who had undergone IVF treatment in the 1980s and then decided to adopt Ms Capilouto after the treatment did not work.

“We’ll find a way,” her mother said on the phone. “I’m sorry it has to be so hard.”