Skip to content Skip to footer

Alabama Governor Signs Bill Granting Immunity to IVF Patients and Providers

“This is the temporary fix,” one lawmaker said.

In a cell laboratory at the Fertility Center Berlin, an electron microscope is used to fertilize an egg cell on January 17, 2024.

On Wednesday night, the Alabama State Legislature approved a bill providing civil and criminal immunity for both in vitro fertilization (IVF) service providers and recipients. Gov. Kay Ivey (R) signed the bill into law within an hour of its approval in the Alabama Senate.

“I am pleased to sign this important, short-term measure into law so that couples in Alabama hoping and praying to be parents can grow their families through IVF,” Ivey said in a statement. “IVF is a complex issue, no doubt, and I anticipate there will be more work to come, but right now, I am confident that this legislation will provide the assurances our IVF clinics need and will lead them to resume services immediately.”

Legislators rapidly moved to provide protection for both IVF providers and recipients in response to a February 16 ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court, which determined that frozen embryos are legally considered children under state law, thereby granting them rights consistent with any person living in the United States. This ruling led to multiple clinics halting IVF services in fear of civil and criminal liability, forcing families to leave the state to access care.

“While this marks the first time a frozen embryo has been granted personhood, it is not the first time we’ve seen anti-abortion lawmakers elevate and amplify the idea of so-called ‘fetal personhood,’ in an attempt to strip away rights from people who can become pregnant and people who are,” the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said last month.

However, while the new law will protect IVF providers and patients, it does not directly undertake the question of fetal personhood, which was central to last month’s ruling. Advocates have criticized the law for not going far enough to protect people’s access to reproductive care.

“There is a much easier way to protect IVF, which is to actually create a privacy right for patients who need IVF, and then protect their access to these services,” Daphne Delvaux, an employment attorney, told Salon. “Instead, what Alabama did is declare embryos as ‘children’ and then create a law that provides immunity to clinics and providers in cases for wrongful death or harm to an embryo.”

Alabama Rep. Terri Collins (R) and Sen. Tim Melson (R), the sponsors of the bill, emphasized that its aim was to offer immediate relief to families who had lost access to IVF services, as lawmakers contemplate more lasting solutions.

“This addresses the imminent problem and that is what I am trying to do today. Do we need to have the longer decision? Yes, we do,” Collins said Thursday.

“This is the temporary fix,” Melson said. “This gets the ladies now currently in the situation, that are in limbo, back in the clinic.”

Alabama is among four states that have enacted “fetal personhood” laws, although over a third of states recognize fetuses as people at some point during pregnancy, according to POLITICO. Additionally, more than a dozen states have introduced bills this legislative session that would grant fetuses the same rights as a person. However, some states, like Florida, have backtracked on advancing fetal personhood laws after seeing the consequences of such measures in Alabama.

“What we know from this past month in Alabama and what we’ve seen so far in Florida, is that anti-abortion extremists are not going to stop at a six-week ban, they are not going to stop with allowing frivolous civil lawsuits against providers and friends, and families, they are not going to stop with banning IVF,” Kara Gross, legislative director and senior policy counsel at the ACLU of Florida, said in a statement. “Their goal is complete government control over any individual reproductive freedoms and this is one more step that takes them closer to that goal. Enough is enough.”

We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.

As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.

Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.

As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.

At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.

Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.

You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.