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Medicine

University of Alabama Pauses IVF Services After Court Embryo Ruling (thehill.com) 309

Posted by BeauHD from the first-major-consequence dept.
Following a recent ruling from the state supreme court, the University of Alabama at Birmingham health system said it is pausing all in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments for fear of criminal prosecution or punitive damages. On Friday, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are "children," entitled to full personhood rights, and anyone who destroys them could be liable in a wrongful death case. The Hill reports: "We are saddened that this will impact our patients' attempt to have a baby through IVF, but we must evaluate the potential that our patients and our physicians could be prosecuted criminally or face punitive damages for following the standard of care for IVF treatments," the health system said. [...] It is standard practice in IVF to fertilize several eggs and then transfer one into a woman's uterus. Any remaining normally developing embryos can be, at the patient's request and consent, frozen for later use. But legal experts say it's unclear if the standard practice is illegal in Alabama and could make IVF virtually inaccessible in the state.

According to the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, the best-developing embryo will be transferred into a patient for an attempt at a pregnancy while the rest are frozen for later use, in case the first one does not develop into a live birth, or the patient later desires another child. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 238,126 patients underwent IVF treatment in 2021, resulting in the births of 97,128 babies, the last year for which statistics were available. There are 453 IVF clinics nationwide.
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University of Alabama Pauses IVF Services After Court Embryo Ruling More

University of Alabama Pauses IVF Services After Court Embryo Ruling

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  • Uni towns politically underrepresented (Score:4, Funny)

    by Frank Burly ( 4247955 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2024 @08:43PM (#64258572)
    It turns out they have hundreds of thousands of residents living in just one building. Someone should try to get these Blue islands more representation in the state legislature.
  • soon the service wont be available.

  • The universe hates humanity (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Randseed ( 132501 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2024 @08:52PM (#64258582)

    Just when you think you might have heard it all...

    So aside from the obvious issues of the idiot who wrote the opinion doing just about everything but quote scripture in the decision, this is about the dumbest thing I've ever heard come out of a court system. So if a woman is freshly pregnant and doesn't know it yet and consumes a beer, is she engaging in child abuse and administering alcohol to an underage person? What about if she the next morning goes and engages in some other risky, but totally legal behavior and something happens to the eight-celled embryo in her womb (that she doesn't even know about yet) -- does that mean she's guilty of child endangerment? What happens if she is a little bit farther along but miscarries because {reasons}? What if she engages in drug use (legal or illegal) that a "reasonable" person should have known would be harmful to the embryo, like many OTC and prescription medications which are contraindicated in pregnancy?

    How does this apply in the state to some woman who gives birth to a child that is afflicted with fetal alcohol syndrome, withdraws from nicotine (yes that's a thing), withdraws from cocaine, heroin, or even marijuana? What about the woman who is over some arbitrary age (let's say 40) who gets herself impregnated due to her "negligent" actions and the child is born with some maternal age-related disease like Down Syndrome? What if the mother or father starts a pregnancy knowing full well that they have some communicable disease or a genetic disorder? Are these people guilty of premeditated child abuse/murder/whatever?

    • Re:The universe hates humanity (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2024 @08:56PM (#64258594)

      >So if a woman is freshly pregnant and doesn't know it yet and consumes a beer, is she engaging in child abuse and administering alcohol to an underage person?

      The way these laws are intended to work... yes, if a powerful enough member of the community decides they want to punish the woman and no, if a powerful enough member of the community is protecting the woman.

      Either way, it turns women into property requiring an influential male owner if they don't want to be subject to incarceration for failing to submit to the system.

    • Just wait until they start arguing that when a woman gets raped her body shuts down the pregnancy, which is the act of killing a person, therefore every woman who resists rape is a murderer.

    • If you believe life begins at conception then it is logically consistent.

      You obviously don't believe life begins at conception and neither do I. But some people do. Can you come up with a convincing argument for a different time?

      The pro choice crowd is also wrong at the other extreme.

      https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wa... [bbc.com]

      • Life begins when someone pays income taxes.

      • I think that this is a super idea! Let's take it logically a little further. If a zygote is a person, then a sperm is half a person - right? So if a Republican senator masturbates, then he's committed murder of a number of "persons" which is roughly half of all the sperm he dumps. Yeah, this could be good.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Incidentally, if (surprisingly) that Republican senator does not mastubate but has a "wet dream" (which is quite inevitable when not masturbating), that needs to be at least a few 100'000 counts of involuntary manslaughter, sentences to be served sequentially.

      • Aaaand you've fallen into the trap. We can talk about life and when it begins all day, and at the end of the day it's irrelevant. The only thing that is relevant is **personhood**.

        The Bible states that personhood begins at birth. Most legal systems do as well. I think that was done mostly as it is very convienient. The christian taliban want to move that point backwards, as far as conception.

        There are lots of good (and bad) arguments for changing when an entity gains personhood, but talking about when

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          The katoliban and evengelifuckups want to make use of contraceptives equivalent to murder. Conception? Amateurs! If you do not supply plenty of new victims to the cult, you _must_ be evil and deserve the worst punishment available!

          Fully agree that this "start of life" "argument" is just a lie by misdirection.

      • Re:The universe hates humanity (Score:5, Interesting)

        by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Thursday February 22, 2024 @01:37AM (#64258982)

        Human reproduction is a very lossy progress. About 80% of fertilized eggs get rejected by the female body anyways. Abortion is not a major factor. Realize it, make a sensible judgment call (generally "will likely survive") and move on. The defects in the human reproduction process are a problem that cannot be fixed, so do not attempt to.

        Oh, and make sure everybody has access to contraceptives and good information about how things work. Teaching abstinence is schools is _malicious_, nothing else.

        • This is what seems so illogical to me at times. If someone is fervently anti-abortion then logically it makes sense to be pro-contraceptive. Make contraceptive easily available and the number of abortions will go down, QED. But that's the engineer in me not understanding how the world really works... How it really works is that some people want a religious society, one founded upon a specific sect, and in that sect premaritcal sex is one of the worst evils there is. Contraceptives makes pre-marital sex

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kwerle ( 39371 )

      You let your women drink!? Pretty sure that makes you the guilty party.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Simple: Lock them all up! Religion is not about fairness or justice. And it always needs some "bad examples" that then get "punished" to keep the others in line by fear.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Opportunist ( 166417 )

        Religion is about control. Always was, always will be. That's the game they're in. Why do you think the one thing they regulate the most is anything sexual? If you control someone's dick, you control that person.

  • What's with the scare quotes around "children"? The court ruled that they are children, not "children". It seems that these "reporters" are editorializing in the news.

    • Those aren't scare quotes, they're just quotes. "Children" was the word used in the ruling, so that's what they're quoting. If the ruling would've used the word "infants", they would've quoted "infants".

      • That's not quite it.

        The court ruled that they were "persons" which is a fictional concept.

        They definitely are children, as the offspring of two people.

        They definitely aren't infamts - those have to be born first.

        They aren't citizens yet either - the Fourteenth Amendment is clear that a "person" first has to be born or naturalized to be a citizen.

        Legal aliens and preborns still have their other Fourteenth Amendment rights.

        nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due proce

        • The very first line of the ruling says:

          This Court has long held that unborn children are "children" for purposes of Alabama's Wrongful Death of a Minor Act...

          It goes on to say that

          The central question presented in these consolidated appeals, which involve the death of embryos kept in a cryogenic nursery, is whether the Act contains an unwritten exception to that rule for extrauterine children -- that is, unborn children who are located outside of a biological uterus at the time they are killed.

          So it didn't

        • For shame: "preborn children" imposes on GOD's majesty and prerogative, by presuming that HE intends for them to be born. Out of respect for the divine and the little tykes themselves, please refer to them as "extrauterine children," as the Alabama Supreme Court does.

        • They definitely are children, as the offspring of two people.

          That's circular logic, because children are defined as the offspring of two people and offspring are defined as the children of two people.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by quonset ( 4839537 )

      Everyone who isn't a religious fanatic knows these aren't children any more than an egg is a chicken.

      If these wack jobs had even bothered to read their little book they'd know that life begins at the first breath. Their little book even says so [biblegateway.com]:

      Then the Lord God formed a man[a] from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

      In other words, that lump of cells isn't a person until it takes its first breath. Or doesn't the Bible mean anything to these people because no matter which version you look at, they all say the same thing [biblehub.com].

      • Because the embryos were made of clay.

    • Because it is a prima facie stupid ruling?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        The real question here is how these people made it onto the supreme court of a state.

  • Masturbation (Score:3)

    by ZipK ( 1051658 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2024 @09:00PM (#64258604)

    For that matter, any masturbatory emissions, where the sperm is clearly not seeking an egg, could be termed reckless abandonment.

    Elle Woods, Legally Blonde

  • Fighting for last place (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2024 @09:05PM (#64258612)

    Alabama has thrown one final knockout blow in the fight against Mississippi for the shittiest state. If NASA has any smarts they would be moving Marshall Space Flight Center to a more reasonable state. No young people with two brain cells are going to want to relocate there.

  • It is standard practice in IVF to fertilize several eggs and then transfer one into a woman's uterus.

    Fertilize one at a time.

    • The rate of failure would be much higher.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ogive17 ( 691899 )

      Fertilize one at a time.

      Not sure if this is sarcasm. I can think of two very simple reasons one at a time is not a good idea. First, no guarantee that one egg will become a viable embryo. Second, cost.

      And since this is a religious debate and not a science debate, why is IVF even accepted by Christians? If I were a religious person, I would argue IVF is against God's plan.

      • Re:Simple solution (Score:4, Informative)

        by Kernel Kurtz ( 182424 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2024 @09:55PM (#64258698)

        If I were a religious person, I would argue IVF is against God's plan.

        You don't think this ruling is saying exactly that?

      • Why is it against God's plan? Maybe God made IVF so Christians can breed faster?

        I don't pretend to speak for God, though.

      • And since this is a religious debate and not a science debate, why is IVF even accepted by Christians? If I were a religious person, I would argue IVF is against God's plan.

        That is, in fact, the position of the Catholic Church.

        The Religious right in Alabama tends to be Southern Baptist... who also think IVF is against God's plan: https://goodfaithmedia.org/sou... [goodfaithmedia.org]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        First, no guarantee that one egg will become a viable embryo.

        They have to check each one selected for implantation. If its not viable, they move on to the next one and try again.

        Second, cost.

        That's the big show-stopper.

        why is IVF even accepted by Christians?

        Because there's no one who goes running to a fertility clinic faster when they can't conceive naturally. Something about "be fruitful and multiply". The higher cost will hit that group harder.

        Perhaps the infertility is God's way of saying, "We really don't want any more of your kind."

  • States like Alabama seriously need to be put under federal conservatorship until they can prove themselves capable of first-world governance. They are lorded over by violently retarded criminals, and are proud of it.

    • And that is different from those lording over in DC...how?

      • Alabama is overwhelmingly consistent in its sub-American behavior. The federal government is inconsistent.

  • A friend of mine is the smartest person in all of Alabama. He has average IQ.

  • GTFO (Score:3)

    by christoban ( 3028573 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2024 @09:39PM (#64258670)

    I'm tellin' ya, GTFO...

  • When I was a kid in the 70s (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2024 @09:39PM (#64258674)

    There was this general feeling that religions would slowly lose ground to science, because it was so damn obvious that they belonged squarely into the dark ages and we had entered the age of reason. We still had to deal with it because of inertia, but essentially things were gonna become better for those with sane mental processes.

    And here we are, a quarter century into the 21st: Roe v. Wade has been overturned and frozen fertilized eggs are full human beings.

    I can't believe this. This is genuinely fucking jaw-dropping for me. Not only has insanity not disappeared as we were promised, it's thriving. How did this future came about?

    I'm ashamed to be a human being. The United States is a living advertisement for human extinction.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by backslashdot ( 95548 )

      The leftward leap was too extreme and too sudden, it generated a backlash. The center doesn't fight, and the right-wing is more organized, has more useful idiots, and powerful.Both sides are polarizing to the extremes. The inevitable outcome is conflict and war. For example, the current biggest fueler of the far right resurgence — Elon Musk — personally retweets every incident of violence by black on white and very rarely white on white (only if it has a gay/tran perp) and definitely never white

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by iAmWaySmarterThanYou ( 10095012 )

      Roe v Wade was a bad decision, not because abortion is good or bad but because having courts made new law from whole cloth is a bad idea.

      New laws belong in the Congress not USSC. It was an over reach and they knew it.

      The only reason neither side ever put a real bill up in Congress to either fully ban or allow abortions nationwide is so they could both have a wedge issue to beat each other up every election.

      "Vote for us! My body my choice!"

      "Vote for us'1 We'll end baby murder!"

      IMO, we don't have nearly en

      • >

        The only reason neither side ever put a real bill up in Congress to either fully ban or allow abortions nationwide is so they could both have a wedge issue to beat each other up every election.

        Every attempt is stalled or filibustered by republicans. It's literally the only policy they have.

      • > Roe v Wade was a bad decision, not because abortion is good or bad but because having courts made new law from whole cloth is a bad idea.

        This assumes that you believe that a women's right to control her body any way she sees fit is alienable. For a lot of women that is a non starter.

        Remember the Declaration of Independence:

        "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty a

  • That some random patient was able to walk into the embryo freezer area and drop a bunch of someone else's frozen embryos on the floor?

    Aspirin bottles at hospitals are better locked up.

  • ... I get the impression that no Republican women need reproductive rights and no Republicans are in the LGBTQ+ community.

    It's Democrats all the way down.

  • Nothing to do now except load up all the embryos and leave town--in the carpool lane of course.

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