Alabama attorney general, Steve Marshall, said that he did not intend to prosecute IVF doctors or patients
"Trust me, bro" is a terrifying way to write laws.
this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2024
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Certainly seems like Alabama just killed any IVF industry they had in the state. No one is gonna run a business on a handshake or a wink.
Looks like it's on purpose.
I think you're right. I guess we'll see if this is enough to split between the "pro-life" people who don't want to see third trimester abortions and the "pro-life" people who think even barrier method contraceptives are a sin. Banning IVF is going to impact a hell of a lot of their bread and butter middle+ class, white, heterosexual couples looking to have families.
I guess that's what they're after too, a shift in the Overton window where the people who "only" want to ban third trimester abortions become middle of the road.
This is our countries future if the Republicans win.
Zero science, zero laws, just a theocratic state run by a cherry-picked bronze age book while the billionaire class sucks it dry and moves on.
No no no, there will be laws. Just barberic ones. Laws that pleases the redneck church and the oil billionaire overlords.
Laws so poorly written our religious politicians can pick and choose to only charge LGBT people and people of color and any other pesky individuals who don't love Jesus as much as or in the same way as they do.
barberic ones
Like when they force you to cut your hair
It's Birmingham sharia law
The article implies that current patients essentially have no choice but to continue storing whatever frozen embryos they have at the cost of hundreds of dollars per year. It also mentioned that fertility clinics have "paused" services due to the legal risk posed to anyone involved if the embryo were to fail at any stage. So what happens now? Will these clinics be legally obligated to continue maintaining these embryos in their frozen state until the end of time? Considering their business model has been made illegal, it seems like bankruptcy is inevitable. Who then becomes responsible for these embryos? This is all so absurd.
Transport the embryos to a non-AL clinic to continue treatment and whoops, now charged with abducting children across state lines.
The Daily had someone call in who was 3 days away from an implantation, the surrogate had been taking shots for weeks to get ready, and the company called it off because of the ruling. And transport companies won't move the embryos because of the ruling. So literally the only legal option is to spend a year and $30,000 starting over in a other state and hoping the far right don't come to power / have a similar judgement in that state in that time.
I wonder what laws AL has about surrending children to the state. Some allow you to surrender babies under, say, 3 months old at a hospital or fire station and the state will take custody.
AL suddenly on the hook for the storage of hundreds if not thousands of people's surrendered embryos? I would think if a person has to start IVF treatment over in a new state, they aren't going to be motivated to keep paying for the embryos in AL.
Edit: still not sure about the specifics of AL, but all 50 states do have some form of safe-haven law.
Fucking morons.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Embryos can fail to develop at any stage of IVF process – for example after they are first formed following the fertilization of an egg with sperm or when they are thawed ahead of implantation into the womb – which makes the ruling that they are “children” even more fraught for doctors.
“Our legal team is telling us that, as the ruling is written, that modern fertility treatments cannot continue in the state of Alabama because of the risk to physicians and embryologists, given that embryos are now considered children,” a doctor told the Guardian earlier this week.
On Friday afternoon, the Alabama attorney general, Steve Marshall, said that he did not intend to prosecute IVF doctors or patients.
Providers could be held liable under civil law, and future attorneys general after Marshall’s tenure could ultimately decide to turn heel and prosecute both IVF doctors and patients.
“And now, this slight window of hope for Alabamans currently undergoing IVF to continue their family-building treatment in other states just slammed shut.
If patients are forced to continue storing their embryos while also not being able to use or discard them, the already pricey IVF treatment process will indefinitely become even more expensive.
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