Biden Falsely Claims IVF Clinics Forced to Close Due to Alabama Supreme Court Decision, Blames US Supreme Court "Dobbs" Decision
During the President's State of the Union Address on March 7th, Joe Biden told the American people that the Alabama Supreme Court decision “shut down IVF treatments across the state” and that their decision was “unleashed by the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.” Neither is true.
The Alabama supreme court ruling held that the word “minor child” in the state’s wrongful-death statute includes frozen embryos. Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act provides that parents may sue when “the death of a minor child is caused by the wrongful act, omission, or negligence of any person, persons, or corporation.”
The court did not say that an unborn child are “persons,” or that a frozen embryo is a “minor child” for any purpose other than a lawsuit under the wrongful-death statute, which has been in place for more than 10 years, and which neither parties in the lawsuit contested. Following the decision, and contrary to what the President Biden said, three IVF clinics in the state only paused their operations, while others remained open.
Click image to view Biden's SOTU speech
Clearly Biden was trying to stoke the public's support of IVF treatments to imply how wrong the Alabama decision was, while at the same time trying to bolster his own party's position on abortion by blaming the outcome on the US Supreme Court's Dobb's decision which overturned Roe vs Wade in June 2022.
The Alabama decision was a result of a lawsuit that was brought by three couples (parents) that had used a fertility clinic operated by the Center for Reproductive Medicine (Center) to undergo IVF treatments. During those treatments, doctors were able to help the parents conceive children by joining the mother's eggs and the father's sperm "in vitro" -- that is, outside the mother's body. The Center artificially gestated each embryo to "a few days" of age and then placed the embryos in the Center's "cryogenic nursery," which is a facility designed to keep extrauterine embryos alive at a
fixed stage of development by preserving them at an extremely low temperature.
Click image to view entire Alabama Supreme Court decision
The parents and the Center agreed that, if properly safeguarded, an embryo can remain alive in a cryogenic nursery "indefinitely" -- several decades, perhaps longer. The parents' IVF treatments led to the creation of several embryos, some of which were implanted and resulted in the births of healthy babies.
The Center was contracted by the parents to have their remaining embryos kept alive in the Center's cryogenic nursery, which is located within the same building as the local hospital, the Mobile Infirmary Medical Center (Hospital). The Hospital is owned and operated by the Mobile Infirmary Association, and the parents alleged that the Center was obligated to keep the cryogenic nursery secured and monitored at all times.
What you likely may not have heard much about in the news regarding this decision, and definitely not from Biden in his "State of the Union" speech, was what actually happened to cause this lawsuit in the first place, which lead to the eventual Alabama Supreme Court decision. As noted in the actual text of the Alabama Supreme Court decision:
"... in December 2020, a patient at the Hospital managed to wander into the Center's fertility clinic through an unsecured doorway. The patient then entered the cryogenic nursery and removed several embryos. The subzero temperatures at which the embryos had been stored freeze-burned the patient's hand, causing the patient to drop the embryos on the floor, killing them."
The parents brought lawsuits against the Center alleging that the Center was obligated to keep the cryogenic nursery secured and monitored at all times, but failed to do so. They allege that the Center was negligent in securing the nursery, which eventually caused the death of their living embryos, and all the Alabama Supreme Court did was to say that those living human embryos should be recognized and afforded protection under the state's wrongful-death statue that allows for damages for the wrongful death of specified individuals.