image copyrightIAN DRUCE
Photo caption,
Margaret Boyce was days away from her first IVF visit when an Alabama court made its decision
About the article
- Author, Nomiya Iqbal
- Position, BBC News, Birmingham, Alabama
-
2 hours ago
When the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos should be considered children, there was shock and confusion in the state. Large clinics stopped providing fertility treatment services, and expectant parents rushed to find out what would happen next.
In America, there has long been a debate on the topic of medical intervention in the process of childbirth, including due to opposition to abortion on the part of Christian organizations. The Alabama court ruling has split Christians and sparked a new wave of debate over the role of theology in lawmaking.
Margaret Boyce is a gentle, modest person and certainly, in her own words, not a fan of crying.
She took fertility drugs for 10 months. Just days away from her first appointment with a doctor for in vitro fertilization (IVF), a ruling from the Alabama Supreme Court crushed her hopes.
The ruling forced many fertility clinics to suspend operations. Margaret was left to turn to the Bible daily for comfort.
The 32-year-old woman and her husband already have a small son, but she is unable to get pregnant a second time. And she dreams of a big family.
“I am one of three children. I think it’s the greatest gift to give your child a brother or sister,” she says.
“The path to becoming parents is different for each couple – mental, emotional and financial,” she added. “This ruling has added unnecessary worry to those who are already struggling.”
Margaret is a devout Christian, which makes this ruling all the more difficult for her to understand given its implications for what she believes to be the process of creating life.
Sign up for our email newsletter to receive the day’s top stories every evening, Monday through Friday, plus context to help you make sense of what’s happening.
“God,” she says, “told us: be fruitful and multiply.”
IVF is a complex and lengthy procedure that involves fertilizing a woman’s eggs with sperm in a laboratory. The resulting embryo is then transferred to the woman’s uterus, where pregnancy can occur – but success is not guaranteed.
In IVF, which accounts for about 2% of pregnancies in the United States, embryos are often frozen or destroyed altogether.
An Alabama court has ruled that the existing law—the wrongful death of a minor—applies not only to fetuses in the womb, but also to embryos stored in a laboratory or storage facility.
This decision does not contain direct restrictions or prohibitions on IVF. But clinics and medical professionals working with embryos are in limbo and fear prosecution.
The state’s attorney general recently said he has no intention of bringing criminal charges against IVF clinics. But doctors at one such clinic who spoke to the BBC said the statement lacked detail and did not address their concerns.
Most Supreme Court justices based their decision on the requirements of the law, but Chief Justice Tom Parker made several references to Scripture in explaining the decision.
The people of Alabama, he wrote, incorporated a “theologically sound notion of the sanctity of life” into the state constitution.
image copyrightSUPEME COURT OF ALABAMA
Photo caption,
Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Parker
After studying the religious sources of classical Christian theologians such as St. Thomas Aquinas, as well as one of the modern manifestos of conservative Christians, he came to the conclusion that “even before birth, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without loss of glory His”.
Some abortion opponents were encouraged by this use of Scripture to justify the court’s decision.
But Margaret is perplexed. She does not accept abortion, but at the same time has difficulty perceiving a frozen embryo as a living person. For her, life begins with a heartbeat.
“No one understands that an embryo is not a child more than a person who longs for that embryo to become a child,” she says.
According to Meredith Render, a professor at the University of Alabama School of Law, American courts sometimes make decisions that appear to be based on religious premises, but such an explicit statement of those premises as in the Alabama court’s decision is rare.
Kelly Baden, vice president of public policy at the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks abortion laws across the United States, said the ruling by a conservative court in a red state was no exception to the rule.
“We see that many elected officials and judges alike often view these debates through a religious lens,” she said.
Unlike federal courts, Alabama Supreme Court judges are not appointed by the President of the United States. However, Donald Trump appointed more than 200 judges to the federal courts while serving as president, giving him strong support among American evangelicals.
During his presidency, he was able to appoint three new justices to the nine-member Supreme Court, and all of these new appointees sided with the majority, overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision in 2022, which held that the right to privacy life under the US Constitution includes a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy.
Since then, the country has renewed debate about reproductive rights. Courts in Missouri have cited the writings of theologians to justify restrictions on abortion rights, and a Trump-appointed judge in Texas who formerly worked for a Christian legal organization tried to impose a nationwide ban on mifepristone, a widely used abortion drug.
Many Republican politicians are comfortable with abortion restrictions passed by conservative courts. For Democrats, they have become a significant issue in recent elections, including the 2022 midterm elections.
Photo copyright: Reuters
Photo caption,
Donald Trump says he supports IVF availability and calls on Alabama to find ‘immediate solution’
A court decision in Alabama by Republican judges involving fertility treatments could have implications for the presidential election campaign.
Any concerns about IVF could increase resentment, especially among suburban Americans and opponents of the abortion ban, which has already cost Republicans dearly since Roe v. Wade was overturned.
Donald Trump himself, the clear frontrunner in the race for the Republican nomination, has come out strongly in support of IVF, calling on Alabama lawmakers to maintain access to the treatment. His last remaining opponent, Nikki Haley, initially supported the Alabama court’s decision but then backed down.
“Philosophically, this is a win for the pro-life movement because it continues to recognize unborn life,” said Eric Johnston, president of the Alabama Pro-Life Coalition. “But you find yourself in a very difficult situation where you have a medical procedure that most people accept, and now what do you do about it?” That’s the dilemma.”
“I agree with the opinion [суда] “Overall, I think it’s well written from a legal and medical point of view,” he added. “But I think the anti-abortion community is generally supportive of IVF, and I’ve worked with a lot of people who have had IVF babies. And at the same time, they believe that abortion is wrong. This issue is very different from abortion, but it has to do with the right to life.”
What’s next for infertility patients in Alabama and beyond?
Over the past week, patients in the southern state have been calling clinics in a panic, emailing local lawmakers and some trying to transfer frozen embryos outside Alabama.
Rodney Miller, 46, and his wife, Mary Lee, 41, had been trying to have children for ten years, but it was only through IVF that they had twins born from frozen embryos a year and a half ago.
He says he is grateful to God for the advances in science and medicine that made this possible.
image copyrightIAN DRUCE
Photo caption,
Rodney Miller believes that the decision of the Alabama court could lead to a decrease in the number of newborns
The couple is now going through the IVF process again and waiting for the two embryos transferred this week to develop into a pregnancy.
“This is not a victory for the Christian right,” says Rodney, who works for Carrywell, an organization that supports families dealing with infertility. “This is a classic case of winning the battle but losing the war.” Because of this, if the situation does not change, fewer children will be born.”
Whether the court’s decision in Alabama will affect decisions in other states remains an open question.
Fetal legal status bills that enshrine the idea that life begins at conception have been initiated in more than a dozen states. But these bills, while promoting the idea that a fetus or embryo is a person, do not connect it to the context of IVF, says Kelly Baden of the Guttmacher Institute.
The Alabama court’s decision—with its implications far beyond access to abortion—thus cannot be considered a trend, she said.
Alabama family law attorney Ashley Meyer Dunham, who has used IVF herself, has worked on a large number of cases affected by the court’s ruling. She said she’s horrified that this could end up affecting infertility patients in other states.
image copyrightIAN DRUCE
Photo caption,
Ashley Meyer Dunham worries other states could make similar decisions
“What worries me the most is that other states forget about us and think, ‘Oh, it’s just a conservative state and they’re all hillbillies. Don’t worry, that will never happen here.” And then you find out it’s happening in other ultra-conservative states,” she says.
Because the Alabama ruling concerns the interpretation of state laws rather than federal law, it is unlikely to reach the U.S. Supreme Court. There is currently a bill in the Alabama House of Representatives, introduced by Democrats, that would effectively suspend the regulation and allow treatment to resume as usual.
Republicans are expected to propose their own bill. In this case, they will have to find a way to somehow balance their divided electorate, where some are celebrating the court’s decision and others are worried about its potential consequences for IVF.
Margaret prays lawmakers will find a solution.
“I’m a pretty secretive person. But if any of my friends or family knew that I was sending emails to all the congressmen and senators, I think they would be shocked,” she says. Then he takes a breath. “But it really turned me on.” Now that’s all I think about.”
Featuring Alex Lederman in Alabama and Kyle Epstein in New York
2024-02-26 20:51:13
#court #Alabama #ruled #embryos #considered #children #ensuing #consequences #Christians #state #divided #BBC #News
