Federal legislation is needed to protect other states from the "legal chaos and uncertainty" brought by an Alabama Supreme Court ruling on in-vitro fertilization, South Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said today.
The court ruled last month that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law. The decision was issued in a pair of wrongful death cases brought by three couples who had frozen embryos destroyed in an accident at a fertility clinic.
Justices, citing anti-abortion language in the Alabama Constitution, ruled that an 1872 state law allowing parents to sue over the death of a minor child “applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location.”
READ MORE: Florida suspends bill to protect ‘unborn child’ after IVF ruling
At a press conference in Sunrise, Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz (FL-25) said her first son and daughter were conceived through IVF treatments — and hit out at the ruling.
“The Alabama Supreme Court just ruled that embryos are children, inflicting legal chaos and uncertainty onto doctors, fertility clinics, and prospective parents there, and its misguided rhetoric is reverberating through other states,” said Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz during a press conference Monday.
She said she is concerned that IVF will become increasingly entangled in the debate over abortion.
“It's these anxious, desperate, and frightened families who extreme Republicans are torturing by targeting IVF,” she said. “The emotional toll that in-vitro fertilization treatments and the hope to start a family and the cycle of failure that often occurs is nothing less than torture.”
Only one in three people support the view that frozen embryos can be considered "as people" and reject holding those who destroy them legally responsible, according to the latest Axios/Ipsos poll released last month. Even Republicans are divided, with only half believing frozen embryos are people.
Access to Family Building Act
Wasserman Schultz called on her colleagues in congress to pass the Access to Family Building Act, which seeks to codify the right of patients to access medical services that may be required for them to have children including IVF.
“We cannot allow politicians to make health care decisions for women. Whether it’s abortion, contraception, or other reproductive care, these decisions should be left to women and their doctors. Period,” said the bill’s cosponsor Representative Mikie Sherrill in a press release.
Every year in the United States, nearly 2% of all babies born are conceived with the help of Assisted Reproductive Technology, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
Following the Alabama ruling, the organization said that consequences of the policy outcomes mandates by the decision will be "profound," if allowed to stand. "Modern fertility care will be unavailable to the people of Alabama, needlessly blocking them from building the families they want,” the organization added in a press release.
The Associated Press contributed reporting to this story.
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