After the Alabama supreme court ruled that embryos are children and deserve all the protections that children are entitled to, IVF clinics in the state began to stop providing IVF services because of fears that if any embryo were to be destroyed (which is done routinely with embryos that are no longer needed), they could be culpable.
The ruling has caused an uproar because IVF treatments have broad support. So the state legislature rushed to pass a law to protect IVF doctors and parents from any legal repercussions. But apparently the law is pretty tortured in its reasoning.
The enacted legislation doesn’t define or clarify whether under state law frozen embryos created via IVF have the same rights as children. Rather, the narrowly tailored bill is designed to protect doctors, clinics and other health care personnel who provide IVF treatment and services by offering such workers civil and criminal “immunity.”
The new law will “provide civil and criminal immunity for death or damage to an embryo to any individual or entity when providing or receiving services related to in vitro fertilization.”
It says that “no action, suit, or criminal prosecution for the damage to or death of an embryo shall be brought or maintained against any individual or entity when providing or receiving services related to in vitro fertilization.”