After ruling, University of Alabama at Birmingham Health System pauses IVF procedures
The University of Alabama at Birmingham health care system announced Wednesday that it was suspending in vitro fertilization treatments as it reviewed the Alabama Supreme Court's ruling that frozen embryos should be considered children.
“We are saddened that this will impact our patients' attempt to have a child through IVF,” said a statement from the health care system, “but we must evaluate the possibility that our patients and our physicians could face criminal charges or a risk compensation for according to the standard of care for IVF treatments.”
The health system's Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility will continue to retrieve eggs from women seeking fertility treatment, the statement said, but will not undertake the next steps in the process — combining the eggs with sperm in a laboratory for fertilization and allowing embryos. development – for now.
“Everything through the egg retrieval remains in place,” the statement said. “Egg fertilization and embryo development are paused.”
In response to a question, a spokesperson for the healthcare system said embryo implantation procedures, the final part of the IVF process, had also been suspended.
The health care system includes the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital, the largest hospital in the state, and according to its websiteone of the twenty 'largest and best equipped' hospitals in the country.
UAB's decision comes just five days after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos frozen in test tubes should be considered children.
The ruling stemmed from appeals filed by couples whose embryos were destroyed in 2020 when a hospital patient removed frozen embryos from liquid nitrogen tanks in Mobile, Alabama, and dropped them on the floor.
The ruling referenced anti-abortion language in the Alabama Constitution, which stated that an 1872 statute allowing parents to sue for the wrongful death of a minor child applies to “unborn children,” without exception 'ectopic children'.
“Even before birth, all people have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory,” Chief Justice Tom Parker wrote in a concurring opinion.
It has become standard medical protocol during in vitro fertilization to extract as many eggs as possible from a woman and then fertilize them to create embryos. Typically, one or two embryos are transferred to the uterus to maximize the chances of successful implantation and a full-term pregnancy; the others are frozen for possible future use.
The ruling sent shockwaves through the world of reproductive medicine, as infertility specialists and legal experts mapped out the potential effects on access to in vitro fertilization and other fertility treatments.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Tuesday that the ruling would create “exactly the kind of chaos we expected when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and cleared the way for politicians to dictate some of the most personal decisions that families can make.”
From 2017 to 2019, 10 percent of American women aged 15 to 44 said they had received some form of fertility care, according to The Guardian. Pew Research Center. In 2021, assisted reproductive technology, including IVF, was responsible for 91,906 births in the United States. Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
In Alabama, 1,219 procedures were performed using assisted reproductive technology were executed in 2021, according to the CDC
Azee Ghorayshi And Roni Caryn Rabin reporting contributed.