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I have spent several days reading coverage of the recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling that recognized extrauterine embyros as children.
Then I read the court’s actual decision and found that the two — the coverage and the ruling — have almost nothing in common.
Headlines decry how the court has effectively “ended in-vitro fertilization” in the state, with breathless reports of clinics closing. Panicked current and prospective IVF parents, even some in Texas are described as “sleepless” and “scrambling” — to do what exactly, I’m not sure.
And they belie the reality of a legal determination that might actually be seen as an ultimate good for IVF consumers in Alabama, who are at the mercy of an industry that is embarrassingly lucrative and largely unregulated.
The plaintiffs in this case are sympathetic figures: three couples and IVF parents whose frozen embryos were lost due to poor security at the facility where they were stored.
Indeed, as the court recounts, a patient — not a doctor or medical professional — easily entered the cryogenic nursery at the hospital where the embryos were kept, took several out of storage and dropped them on the floor, killing them.