Haley says, 'Embryos are babies to me,' in response to Alabama court ruling
Nikki Haley told NBC News On Wednesday, she said she believed embryos created through in vitro fertilization were “babies” after the Alabama Supreme Court issued a major ruling Friday that raised legal questions about reproductive medicine and fertility care.
“Embryos to me are babies,” Ms. Haley said after an NBC correspondent, Ali Vitali, asked her if she agreed with the court that “embryos created through IVF are considered children.”
When Ms. Haley asked if she was referring specifically to embryos created by IVF, she recalled having her son through artificial insemination. “One thing is saving sperm or saving eggs, but when you're talking about an embryo you're talking about – to me that's a life,” she said, “and so I understand where that comes from if they are talking about That.”
But she seemed to hedge when asked about the implications of the Alabama ruling, saying questions about whether the decision could affect people seeking IVF require “incredibly personal” conversations with doctors and patients require.
When pressed on the question, Ms. Haley added: “This is one where we have to be incredibly respectful and sensitive.”
Ms. Haley has tried to walk a fine line in her presidential campaign on issues related to reproductive medicine, especially abortion access. While she has said that she personally supports the abortion ban, and that as governor of South Carolina she would have signed a six-week abortion ban, she has also tried to appeal to moderate voters by portraying the issue as an issue that demands of politicians: finding consensus.”
The Alabama Supreme Court ruled Friday that embryos frozen in test tubes should be considered children, which could have a profound impact on the field of reproductive medicine by raising legal questions about fertility care options for expectant parents in Alabama and beyond.
The decision came in the appeals of couples whose frozen embryos were destroyed in 2020 after a hospital patient removed them from liquid nitrogen tanks in Mobile, Alabama, and accidentally dropped them on the floor.
According to standard medical protocol, in vitro fertilization involves extracting multiple eggs from a patient, fertilizing them to create embryos and then freezing them. Those embryos can be transferred later to maximize the chances of successful implantation and a full-term pregnancy.
But by ruling that embryos are considered “children,” the Alabama Supreme Court has raised legal questions among some medical professionals about whether the process of handling embryos in this way would violate the law.
The University of Alabama at Birmingham health care system said Wednesday that this would be the case interrupting in vitro fertilization treatments.
In her interview with NBC News, Ms. Haley said she would like to look at specific legislation regarding the issue in Alabama and elsewhere, saying these were “sensitive topics where the details matter.”
“If you see more women having trouble conceiving, and you see more women doing artificial and in vitro, those are conversations we need to have,” she said. “But they're also conversations where we need to bring women and physicians into the conversation to say, 'How do we want to approach this in the future?'”