Alabama lawmakers are advancing bills in a race to protect IVF
Alabama lawmakers on Thursday overwhelmingly proposed legislation that would protect doctors, clinics and hospitals that offer in vitro fertilization treatments. This cleared a major hurdle in their race to enshrine protections for reproductive medicine into law.
The battle comes after a state Supreme Court ruling this month ruled that frozen embryos must be considered children under Alabama law, disrupting IVF treatment across the state and prompting several clinics to stop offering offering the treatments to avoid possible liability.
The Senate unanimously approved its version of the measure, while the House approved its bill by a 94-6 margin, with some lawmakers abstaining. Final approval is expected in the coming days, and Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, has indicated she would support such a proposal.
The rapid pace of legislation underscores how most Alabama Republicans are eager to demonstrate to their voters that they will not stand in the way of the many families turning to IVF as a way to have a child.
National Republicans — including former President Donald J. Trump, the frontrunner for the party’s presidential nomination — have also been quick to emphasize their support for reproductive medicine and encouraged Alabama lawmakers to take action.
But Thursday’s debate also made clear that the Supreme Court’s ruling has raised complex and uncomfortable questions for Republicans, who must reconcile a long-held belief that life begins at conception with the science of IVF treatment.
Notably, the measures proposed Thursday do not address the court’s claim that frozen embryos should be considered children, but instead aim to protect the treatment providers from civil or criminal liability. It remains unclear, as some lawmakers noted during the debate, whether the legislation will spark new lawsuits or do enough to ensure the continuation of IVF treatments in the state.
And while the votes were overwhelmingly in favor, both Republicans and Democrats expressed frustration with the scope of the legislation. Some Republicans in the House of Representatives objected to a clause that would allow the measure to take effect retroactively for potential cases outside the lawsuit that led to the ruling. They also questioned why lawmakers dropped a bid to end the law in June 2025, which some saw as a possible deadline to force lawmakers to act further.
Representative Terri Collins, the lead Republican author of the legislation in the House of Representatives, framed the measure as a way to ensure clinics can safely reopen in the state as lawmakers grapple with the moral, legal and theological questions surrounding it. granting the rights of a person to an embryo.
“We will have to continue to work together to solve the problem,” she said. “But right now we wanted to get the clinics open so the families could use them, and we did.”
Democrats, who largely joined Republicans in supporting the measures, also questioned whether they were doing enough to protect not only doctors but also parents receiving IVF treatment. Top Democrats have introduced separate bills — including a constitutional amendment — explicitly stating that embryos should not be considered children, but these have been largely ignored by the Republican supermajority.
State Rep. Chris England, a Democrat from Tuscaloosa, said the Republican-drafted bill “requires us to be morally ambiguous and intellectually dishonest at the same time.”