Lila Rose, founder and president of Live Action, released the following statement after Governor Kay Ivey of Alabama signed new legislation into law granting criminal and civil immunity to the in-vitro fertilization (IVF) industry:
Tragically, the Governor of Alabama has given the IVF industry a license to kill. The legislation she has signed into law gives blanket immunity to the unregulated and profit-driven IVF industry, explicitly allowing abusive and destructive practices.
This law will have catastrophic consequences and withdraws existing legal protections for Alabama’s most vulnerable persons simply because those persons were created through IVF. This law provides dangerous civil and criminal immunity for “damage to or the death of an embryo” in the course of “providing or receiving services related to in vitro fertilization.” That means complete legal permission to destroy, by accident or intention, embryonic children created through IVF—even against the wishes of the parents.
Stripping embryonic human beings of legal protections is also unconstitutional. This law violates the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which mandates that no state shall deny to any person the equal protection of the laws. This new Alabama law denies equal protection to preborn persons created through IVF, because it withdraws the protections of civil and criminal law that exist for born persons or preborn persons in the womb. In Alabama, children created through IVF are no longer protected equally under the law.
I also encourage Alabama leaders to look at The Alabama Human Life Protection Act, which prohibits abortion unless the life of the mother is at serious risk which states: “Abortion advocates speak to women’s rights, but they ignore the unborn child, while medical science has increasingly recognized the humanity of the unborn child.” This law giving the IVF industry the unfettered immunity to destroy countless unborn children, brazenly ignores the science that conclusively recognizes their humanity.
This new law also violates the Alabama Constitution, which states that Alabama “acknowledges, declares, and affirms that it is the public policy of this state to recognize and support the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children, including the right to life. This state further acknowledges, declares, and affirms that it is the public policy of this state to ensure the protection of the rights of the unborn child in all manners and measures lawful and appropriate.”
Live Action led a coalition of pro-life groups representing millions of Americans and thousands of Alabamians who are working both nationally and in Alabama specifically, which urged the veto of this legislation. Unfortunately, Governor Ivey ignored those pro-life voices and signed the bill.
Politicians cannot call themselves pro-life, affirm the truth that human life begins at the moment of fertilization, and then enact laws that allow the callous killing of these preborn children simply because they were created through IVF. American law must reconsider its approach to IVF. Infertility can be an incredibly painful burden and is increasingly common. But the solution cannot be to deny legal protections to human embryos or to allow them to be frozen or killed at will in America’s IVF industry, which is the approach the Alabama government has chosen.
This law is not pro-life. This law disrespects human life and strips human beings of their dignity. This law will result in thousands of dead human beings.
