Life Starts at Conception, But...

Alabama legislators are trying to find a way around the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling protecting frozen embryos used for in vitro fertilization (IVF), which is beginning to shut down IVF procedures in hospitals and clinics across the state.

We are here because the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs, the case that overruled Roe v. Wade and abortion rights, that it was up to each state to set its own rules around abortion. Some states, like Alabama, passed fetal personhood bills, making the determination that life begins at the moment of conception. The embryos used in IVF are past that stage. They are fertilized eggs that are permitted to grow for a few days before being frozen. That means that in states where life begins at conception, the only logically consistent conclusion courts asked to weigh in on the implications of destroying or disposing embryos—children—can reach is that it’s murder.

As of today, there are bills under consideration in both the Alabama House and Senate that take a new tack. Life begins at conception, but—and it’s the but that matters here—not until that life is in a uterus. Imagine the discomfort conservative Alabama legislators are experiencing discussing the bill designed to ensure that their wives and daughters can get IVF if they have trouble conceiving, despite the Republican Party’s insistence that life begins at conception. They’ve put themselves in a politically inconvenient box, and now they’re going to have to try to legislate their way out of it.

The Senate bill backpedals from the Alabama Court’s decision last week, excluding a fertilized human egg or human embryo that is outside of a human uterus “under any circumstances” from consideration as “an unborn child, a minor child, a natural person, or any other term that connotes a human being for any purpose under state law.” The House bill puts it in a more straightforward fashion: an embryo “is not considered an unborn child or human being for any purpose under state law.”

“We all know that conception is a big argument that it’s life,” State Senator Tim Melson, R-Florence, said in support of the bill he’s a co-sponsor on. “I won’t argue that point, but it’s not going to form into a life until it’s put into the uterus.”

The Alabama Reflector reported that “Melson told reporters Thursday afternoon that it was time to figure out some of the consequences of IVF technology, and that a woman should not be charged with abandonment or manslaughter if she chooses not to use all of her frozen embryos. ‘When a lady is two or three successful pregnancies and these are left over, it’s just time to make sure that they aren’t penalized for success,’ he said.”

Apparently, disposing of an unwanted frozen embryo, which, like abortion, results in terminating the viability of a fertilized egg, is okay if you’ve already had a couple of babies.

While state legislators rushed to try and save IVF despite the contradiction with their views about when life begins, Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, once again, made no sense. “I was all for it,” he told reporters following his appearance at Republican conference CPAC in Washington, D.C. “We need to have more kids, we need to have an opportunity to do that, and I think this was the right thing to do.” It is unclear how we “have more kids” if cutting off IVF was “the right thing to do.” Reporters had to explain to Tuberville how the IVF ruling actually worked. When they asked if it concerned him, he responded, “That’s for another conversation … That’s a hard one, it really is, because again, you want people to have that opportunity. ... we need more kids.”

“Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself,” Alabama Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker wrote in his concurring opinion in the IVF case. Apparently, some Alabama legislators are willing to risk his wrath to get what they want.

Women across the country are already appalled by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision reversing Roe v. Wade, which takes away women’s ability to make their own healthcare decisions. The Alabama decision is sure to resonate further. Can women safely vote for any Republican? Even Nikki Haley said, “Embryos, to me, are babies.”

As jokes about Talibama and egg memes get passed around, the reality is that unless women want to watch their ability to make their own choices slip away—perhaps even about issues like birth control—they need to vote like their futures depend upon it. Because they do.

Fetal personhood bills may violate both state and federal religious freedom laws—not all religious traditions believe life begins at conception. Challenges are beginning to percolate in the lower courts on this basis. But their success is by no means assured. The Alabama Supreme Court has already made its views clear. And before she became a judge, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett publicly supported a group that promotes the belief that life begins at the moment of fertilization and that discarding unused embryos created during the IVF process should be criminalized. Might there be five votes for that view on this Supreme Court? It’s impossible to rule out that possibility.

We’re in this together,

Joyce