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.
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00:00 I just have a bill that says that a fertilized egg or embryo has potential life.
00:08 It's not actual life until it's placed or adheres to the uterus.
00:14 We have advanced so far in medicine that now we're storing everything from embryos to sperm to eggs for future use.
00:22 We hadn't really thought about the consequences of that, but it's time to figure that out.
00:29 I'm just saying that until it's implanted in the uterus, there's potential life and that people shouldn't be criminalized or be held harmful for things that happen.
00:38 They should be held harmless.
00:40 I think a lot of things that happen in those clinics are for good people, just wanting to have a family, a normal life, raise kids.
00:50 What we're trying to do with this particular law is put the Supreme Court decision, the ruling, on pause.
00:56 And in putting it on pause, we know what we're trying to clearly help folks understand that a fertilized embryo is not a child.
01:05 They didn't have to say whether the fetuses or embryos had constitutional rights.
01:10 They were just saying that for the purposes of this wrongful death law, they're persons or children.
01:16 I think it's fair to read the court's opinion.
01:19 The logic of the court's opinion is going much beyond the wrongful death law.
01:23 I think it would be really surprising if this court didn't think that fetuses and embryos were constitutional persons in Alabama, too.
01:31 But they were pretty clear that they didn't need to go there to resolve this case, so they didn't say anything explicitly about that.
01:38 I think people in Alabama are rightly expecting that this is the tip of the iceberg, though, and that this ruling will lead to more down the road.
01:47 You certainly can't destroy them or donate them for research.
01:50 It's not clear you can store them or freeze them, because if they're children, you can't store or freeze children.
01:56 There's the possibility, of course, that in the process of doing in vitro fertilization, you could inadvertently destroy an embryo, which would open you up to wrongful death suits.
02:05 And I think fertility providers in Alabama are worried that if, again, if this is just the tip of the iceberg, that down the road there could be criminal charges as well as civil liability.
02:14 After this ruling, we are continuing to provide IVF services.
02:18 This ruling has not grossly affected how we, well, our ability to be able to undergo these IVF procedures for patients.
02:28 We're getting more calls from patients who are about to go through an IVF procedure with an egg retrieval than we are patients who already have embryos.
02:38 And the patients that are the most panicked are the ones that should be, this is least affecting, because I'm not saying it's not affecting them at all.
02:47 We are, but these patients who had plans to go through IVF should be able to all still continue to go through IVF with FINA.
02:57 We will adjust our informed consents and re-do those with all of these patients with upcoming cycles,
03:05 just so they can understand what just happened and have an opportunity in light of this new information to make different decisions on how many embryos they want fertilized.