In the year since the Alabama Supreme Court handed down a decision that recognized IVF-created embryos as persons worthy of protection and justice, politicians in red and blue states alike have clamored to “protect IVF.” In the most recent instance of this, Louisiana State Senator Thomas Pressly, a pro-life stalwart who has done incredible work to advance protections for life in his state, has recently proposed a bill to “protect” the IVF industry, arguing that Louisiana needs to make sure to avoid an “Alabama situation.” The “Alabama situation was thrown around euphemistically by multiple committee members during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing and also by Sen. Pressly during Senate Floor debate. But none of the Senators, including Sen. Pressly, were clear about the details of the so-called “Alabama situation” and exactly what Louisiana needs to avoid.
To add some clarity to the “Alabama situation,” in 2020, a patient at the Mobile Infirmary Center for Reproductive Medicine was able to wander into a back room where embryos were being stored—which should have been accessible only to staff—and pick up vials containing embryos. The patient then dropped the embryos due to the extreme cold, causing them to be destroyed. The affected parents sued the center, and in February of 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court rightly recognized that the Center’s irresponsibility had not merely caused distress, but had in fact caused parents to lose their preborn children. The Center was found to be civilly liable under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, consistent with Alabama law recognizing that personhood begins at fertilization.
In response to this ruling, the IVF industry in Alabama temporarily ceased operation, claiming that it would be impossible to continue under such a ruling. To be clear, this was a ruling that held the industry accountable for negligence that had caused direct harm. That accountability is the “situation” that Senator Pressly and the supporters of this bill are seeking to avoid in Louisiana.
At Them Before us, we also want to see Louisiana avoid an “Alabama situation,” but Sen. Pressly’s bill is not the solution. We want to see Louisiana avoid an “Alabama situation” because we don’t want any parent in Louisiana to go through what those parents in Alabama went through. We don’t want IVF patients to have their embryos wrongfully destroyed because a clinic failed to secure an area that should have been accessible only to medical staff. We don’t want lives destroyed by industry negligence.
Louisiana has the best laws in the nation protecting the lives created by the IVF industry and the parents who are trusting that industry to care for their embryonic children—they are truly a credit to the state’s pro-life and pro-family values. One of the things that makes Louisiana’s IVF laws unique is the acknowledgement of parental rights from fertilization. Parental rights exist because a parent-child relationship exists, and that relationship exists from the moment life begins. Parental rights are protective toward the child because they are a recognition of the parents’ unique connection to the child and a high responsibility toward him or her. Parental rights also recognize that when a child is harmed or killed, parents are harmed as well. Sen. Pressly’s bill removes the language acknowledging parental rights, and in doing so, reduces the protections for embryos that come with the recognition of parental rights.
Sen. Pressly’s bill also makes it clear that the only recourse available to an IVF parent if their embryos are harmed, lost, damaged, or destroyed through negligence or error is the Medical Malpractice Act. In March of this year, Bloomberg Law presented illuminating analysis explaining why couples have not been able to rely on medical malpractice laws for recourse when their embryos are wrongly destroyed. In the article, an attorney representing IVF parents whose embryos were accidentally destroyed when CooperSurgical used a toxic solution in embryo cultures explains that embryo destruction doesn’t fit into medical malpractice laws because the embryos are outside of the patient’s body. This is very important to keep in mind when considering Sen. Pressly’s bill. Removing parental rights language and also limiting IVF providers’ liability to the Medical Malpractice Act essentially ensures that a parent whose embryos are wrongfully destroyed will not be able to receive justice.
The inconvenient truth, couched in language of “protecting IVF” and “avoiding an Alabama situation,” is that the goal of this bill is to prevent the industry from being held liable for negligence. In any other instance where lives were lost because a clinic or hospital failed to act responsibly, we would not see pro-life legislators trying to ensure that in the future, a similar situation would not lead to similar accountability.
The IVF industry has operated in Louisiana for nearly 40 years under the state’s existing IVF laws. This demonstrates that the industry is perfectly capable of abiding by current standards. There is no need to change Louisiana’s IVF laws in order for IVF to continue in the state. Doing so unnecessarily sends the message that Louisiana is more concerned with protecting negligent actors from liability than it is with protecting vulnerable lives and hopeful families.
The sponsors of this bill must explain exactly what they mean when they say they want to “avoid another Alabama situation,” and they must recognize that the responsibility for avoiding an “Alabama situation” ultimately rests on the industry. There would have been no ruling on IVF from the Alabama Supreme Court if the Center for Reproductive Medicine had not acted negligently. And Louisiana legislators must consider the vulnerable situation they place IVF patients in if they walk back existing IVF laws. Louisiana IVF patients are uniquely protected under Louisiana’s laws—they are the only laws in the nation that recognize that from the moment of fertilization, IVF patients are parents of their embryos.
If Senator Pressly truly wants to avoid another Alabama situation, then he ought to take up legislation requiring better reporting from the industry, better standards for the clinics and facilities where human embryos are created and handled, and a more cooperative and accountable relationship between the IVF industry and the legislature. Surely when Senator Pressly says he wants to avoid a repeat of “what happened in Alabama” he does not mean that he hopes to never see the Louisiana Supreme Court hand down a ruling that recognizes the value and dignity of every human life from the moment of fertilization. Yet the legislation he has proposed suggests that he may be trying to avoid just that, or at very least, avoid accountability for the IVF industry.
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