Legal tangle increases stress on IVF patients in Alabama

Leelee Ray and her husband, Austin, have been trying to have a child for six years, through insemination procedures, two egg retrievals, four embryo transfers, an ectopic pregnancy that could have been fatal and eight miscarriages.

With four frozen embryos still in storage at a fertility clinic, the Rays, who live in Huntsville, Alabama, decided to change course. In February, they turned to an agency in Colorado, where gestational carrier laws are more forgiving than in Alabama, to find a woman who could carry their baby.

Just days later, it all came to a halt, when the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos should be considered “ectopic children” under state law and several fertility clinics in the state halted IVF treatments.

“When I called my clinic to ask how quickly I could get my embryos out of state, they told me everything was suspended, including shipping embryos,” Ms. Ray, 35, said.

Hoping to quell national outrage over the court ruling, Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, signed legislation Wednesday evening that protects IVF clinics from civil actions and criminal charges related to their handling of embryos.

But for would-be parents like the Rays, significant damage had already been done.

The ruling disrupted fertility treatments that are expensive, physically and emotionally taxing, extremely time-sensitive, and consume precious resources that many couples did not have. Their experiences could soon be repeated in other states, as anti-abortion forces push to redefine the beginning of life.

The Rays’ surrogacy contract stated that their embryos had to be sent to Colorado as soon as possible. The surrogacy agency has worked with the couple to extend the deadline, but if the delays continue, the Rays could lose tens of thousands of dollars, as well as access to the surrogacy option they chose.

“I love that many in our Legislature are people of faith who agree with my thoughts and beliefs,” Ms. Ray said. “But this is not the place where the government should get involved.”

“Now people are terrified, and we’ve all been sending texts saying, ‘Let’s move our embryos to California, the most liberal state we can think of, where we think this is the last place this could happen ‘,” she added. .

The court’s ruling caught some patients at crucial, vulnerable points in their treatment.

Jasmine York, 34, an emergency and intensive care unit nurse in Alexander City, Alabama, had just begun a course of medication to prepare for the implantation of a frozen embryo when her doctor called to say the court’s decision process had stopped.

“I was completely surprised,” said Ms. York, who describes herself as a Christian who does not support abortion. (She wears a pin depicting a Christ-like figure in a robe asking, “Do you need me?”

Mrs. York and her husband, Jared, have a 13-year-old daughter from her first marriage, but her husband has no biological children, and they really want a baby. She felt both hopeless and a little angry, she said. “In the end, someone else’s opinion changed my future.”

She added: “Didn’t God give us science? Did he give us the ability to perform all these medical miracles? Isn’t he working through it?’

Rebecca Mathews, a 36-year-old mother of two children through IVF, one of whom is named after her fertility doctor, struggled with several questions as the ruling came down.

She and her husband, Wright, had one frozen embryo left, and their family felt complete. But they hadn’t yet decided whether to try for another pregnancy. “We thought we had time,” said Ms. Mathews, who lives in Montgomery, Ala.

The new law shielding IVF clinics may offer the couple some breathing space, but how much is not clear. The law does not address the underlying legal issue — that frozen embryos are children under state law — and its protections are so broad that it may not survive legal challenges.

“It’s hard enough deciding what to do with these embryos,” Ms Mathews said. “It is a decision you have to make together with your partner and doctor. We don’t need the government to get involved.”

National anti-abortion groups that believe embryos – frozen just days after eggs are fertilized – create life have spoken out against the new law. More than a dozen organizations, including Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, urged Governor Ivey not to sign the bill, arguing that the court’s ruling “simply requires fertility clinics to exercise due diligence on the lives they create.”

One Alabama lawmaker who argued against the new law, state Rep. Ernie Yarbrough, a Republican from Morgan, Alabama, said the episode had “exposed a silent holocaust that is underway in our state,” adding, “We have to do with the life and death of children.”

Over the past two weeks, many parents and parents-to-be who identify as Christian have struggled with conflicting feelings about the sudden intersection of religious faith and public policy.

Lauren Roth, 30, who has a seven-month-old baby born after IVF, was one of several people who attended a rally in Montgomery in support of legislation to protect clinics. She and many others wore orange, a color that followers say has symbolized fertility since ancient times.

Mrs. Roth and her husband, Jonathan, have seven frozen embryos. She would like to have them all transferred to her uterus, she said, “as long as I am healthy.”

“I personally believe that they are unique beings, created in the image of God, that each is a unique genetic embryo that will never exist again,” Ms. Roth said. “I value the embryos as life, but that is a personal, individual belief.”

Other women undergoing IVF disagreed, saying an embryo in a test tube should not be considered a child.

“It can’t grow into a child outside the womb,” said Mallory Howard, 34, who lives outside Mobile, Ala. “To me that is not fertilization.”

She has two children and was about to start a round of ovarian stimulation in preparation for egg retrieval when the ruling was issued. The procedure was delayed.

The court’s ruling “means that any time you have sex and an egg is fertilized but doesn’t implant, and you never even know about it, that could be considered an abortion,” Ms. Howard said.

“We’re in the South, where people don’t want the government dictating whether or not they should have a gun,” Ms. Howard said. “But they are okay with the government saying reproductive rights are a government issue just because they agree with that agenda.”