A second Alabama IVF provider pauses parts of its program after court ruling on frozen embryos

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A second in vitro fertilization provider in Alabama is pausing parts of its care to patients after the state Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are legally considered children.

Alabama Fertility Services said in a statement Thursday that has “made the impossibly difficult decision to hold new IVF treatments due to the legal risk to our clinic and our embryologists.”

The decision comes a day after the University of Alabama at Birmingham health system said in a statement that it was pausing IVF treatments so it could evaluate whether its patients or doctors could face criminal charges or punitive damages.

“We are contacting patients that will be affected today to find solutions for them and we are working as hard as we can to alert our legislators as to the far reaching negative impact of this ruling on the women of Alabama,” Alabama Fertility stated. “AFS will not close. We will continue to fight for our patients and the families of Alabama."

Doctors and patients have been grappling with shock and fear this week as they try to determine what they can and can't do after the ruling by the all-Republican Alabama Supreme Court that raises questions about the future of IVF.

“Disbelief, denial, all the stages of grief. ... I was stunned,” Dr. Michael C. Allemand, a reproductive endocrinologist at Alabama Fertility, said Wednesday.

Allemand said IVF is often the best treatment for patients who desperately want a child, and the ruling threatens doctors’ ability to provide that care.

“The moments that our patients are wanting to have by growing their families — Christmas mornings with grandparents, kindergarten, going in the first day of school, with little backpacks— all that stuff is what this is about. Those are the real moments that this ruling could deprive patients of,” he said.

Justices — citing language in the Alabama Constitution that the state recognizes the “rights of the unborn child” — said three couples could sue for wrongful death when their frozen embryos were destroyed in a accident at a storage facility.

“Unborn children are ‘children’ ... without exception based on developmental stage, physical location, or any other ancillary characteristics,” Justice Jay Mitchell wrote in Friday’s majority ruling. Mitchell said the court had previously ruled that a fetus killed when a woman is pregnant is covered under Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act and nothing excludes “extrauterine children from the Act’s coverage.”

While the court case centered on whether embryos were covered under the wrongful death of a minor statute, some said treating the embryo as a child — rather than property — could have broader implications and call into question many of the practices of IVF.