Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has joined a wave of progressive politicians denouncing the Alabama Supreme Court, which ruled that frozen embryos are children.
Clinton warned that the ruling on embryos created for invitro fertilization will lead to restrictions on birth control.
“They came for abortion first. Now it’s IVF and next it’ll be birth control,” she wrote on X. “The extreme right won’t stop trying to exert government control over our most sacred personal decisions until we codify reproductive freedom as a human right.”
The former Democratic presidential nominee shared a link to a Jezebel article, which reported that “legal experts have since warned that if the destruction of embryos—which is standard practice for IVF” could be classified as a “wrongful death,” IVF could be in jeopardy.
“The increased exposure to wrongful death liability as advocated by the Appellants would—at best—substantially increase the costs associated with IVF,” said the Medical Association of the State of Alabama in a brief filed with the state Supreme Court in September. “More ominously, the increased risk of legal exposure might result in Alabama’s fertility clinics shutting down and fertility specialists moving to other states to practice fertility medicine.”
Three couples filed a lawsuit against a hospital in Mobile where a patient was able to access the cryogenic nursey and took their embryos out of a freezer. The patient ultimately dropped the embryos, destroying them. The parents were seeking damages under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act but their case was dismissed by a lower court which did not acknowledge the extrauterine embryos as children. The state’s Supreme Court overturned the previous ruling on Feb. 16.
Since the ruling, at least three fertility clinics have paused their practices while they considered the legal implications.
Clinton has warned of increasing boldness among conservative members of government since the United States Supreme Court overturned 1973’s Roe v. Wade decision in June of 2022.
“This opinion is dark. It is incredibly dangerous and it is not just about a woman's right to choose. It is about much more than that,” she said during an interview with CBS in May of 2022 after a leaked version of the court’s decision was released.
“Any American who says, 'Look, I'm not a woman, this doesn't affect me. I'm not Black, that doesn't affect me. I'm not gay, that doesn't affect me' — once you allow this kind of extreme power to take hold you have no idea who they will come for next,” Clinton continued. “I hope people now are fully aware of what we're up against, because the only answer is at the ballot box to elect people who will stand up for every American's rights.”
Her new condemnation of Alabama’s decision coincided with similar predictions of impending doom from President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
In a statement released on Feb. 22, Biden said the state’s Supreme Court had “put access to some fertility treatments at risk for families who are desperately trying to get pregnant.”
“The disregard for women’s ability to make these decisions for themselves and their families is outrageous and unacceptable,” said the president.
