What the Alabama Supreme Court Decision Means for a Florida-Based PEOPLE Staffer with Frozen Embryos (Exclusive)

“Unfortunately, there are no other options.”

This was the scathing email response I received Wednesday from the company currently storing my seven remaining frozen embryos, created in the two rounds of IVF I underwent in 2019 and 2020 due to unexplained infertility. Six of them are aneuploid — chromosomally abnormal and completely incompatible with life.

My urgency to email them in the first place came after the recent ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court that frozen embryos will now legally be considered children in the state. Florida — where I live — could easily be next.

The clinic’s email response was to my question about whether I could donate my six aneuploid embryos for research while keeping my viable one – after being told that their “company policy does not allow partial rejection”.

My husband and I have decided to keep all embryos stored until further notice (including the non-viable ones) until we are ready to fully complete our IVF journey in 2025. We have been through so much to start our family and preferred to cross the discard-or-donate bridge when we got to him.

Jen Juneau and husband Josh Haupt. Jen Juneau

The clinic’s answer, in short: If you want to continue managing your embryos through us, either transfer your healthy embryo now and destroy the abnormal ones, destroy the entire batch including the healthy ones, or just stay calm and risk potentially being tried as a criminal in the future.

What a decision.

The latter is something I never thought in a million years would happen to me as someone who turned to IVF to start a family — even when Roe v. Wade The U.S. Supreme Court overturned it in June 2022 after almost 50 years, virtually abolishing the constitutional right of a pregnant woman to an abortion in every state.

The latest decision in Alabama comes as a result of a wrongful-death lawsuit brought by couples whose frozen embryos were destroyed at a fertility clinic in December 2020, when a patient entered the frozen embryo storage area and removed several of them.

According to the Feb. 16 decision, unborn children are legally considered children “without exception based on developmental stage, physical condition, or any other secondary characteristic.”

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Correspondence of Jen Juneau with the Embryo Center.

Jen Juneau

Why I chose a medical abortion—twice—while struggling with infertility for years

In a statement released Sunday in response, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) said it “condemns” the “deeply flawed and dangerous court decision in Alabama.”

“In its medically and scientifically unfounded decision, the court held that a fertilized egg frozen in an infertility clinic’s freezer should be treated as the legal equivalent of an existing child or fetus gestating in the womb. The eight members of the court who approved the decision may consider those things the same, but science and everyday common sense tell us they are not,” the group said.

After summarizing the science behind IVF, they added in part: “By insisting that these very different biological entities are legally equivalent, the best state-of-the-art fertility care will be unavailable to the people of Alabama. No health care provider will be willing to provide treatments if you treatments may lead to civil or criminal charges.”

“The choice to build a family is a fundamental right for all Americans, regardless of where they live. We cannot, therefore, allow this dangerous precedent of judicial overreach with national implications to go unchecked,” the ASRM statement also reads. “We urge the citizens of Alabama to demand that their elected officials ensure that the citizens of Alabama are not victims of political and ideological whims. To our members across the state: We will not stop until your ability to provide the best patient care is established.”

Exterior view of the Alabama Supreme Court building.

Getty

I spoke with Dr. Mark Trolice, a board-certified reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist (REI) and founder/director of the IVF Center in Winter Park, Florida, about the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision and what it could mean for the broader conversation about IVF and human rights. .

“Infertility is a disease designated by the American Medical Association and the World Health Organization,” says Dr. Trolice. “By impeding treatment for a disease proven to be effective for nearly half a century, on religious grounds and without medical or legal basis, Alabama’s ruling represents an unjustified denial of reproductive care to one in six people struggling to start a family.”

dr. Trolice — who also wrote a book under the title A doctor’s guide to overcoming infertility (2020), who faced a 10-year struggle with infertility in his own family and serves on the boards of several committees, including ASRM and the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART) — says the potential ramifications of the Alabama decision include “fostering the anti- abortions,” “asserting control over women,” and “turning embryo cryopreservation containers into frozen nurseries,” the latter of which could require IVF patients to pay permanent embryo storage fees.

“Will frozen embryos claim child support after divorce? Will women and couples get a child tax credit based on frozen embryos, because they will be labeled as unborn children?” he says.

The embryo that will become Jen Juneau’s daughter. Jen Juneau The Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children, jeopardizing IVF options

Asked what advice he would give to patients who are considering IVF or already have frozen embryos, Dr. Trolice emphasizes that the relevant laws regarding IVF restrictions have not yet been passed and that premature speculation about the worst-case scenario could only add unnecessary tension .

As she explains, “Infertility patients have enough anxiety and stress about their illness. So I think giving credence to the potential occurrence can only add to the stress of women and couples who are facing the challenge of building a family.”

“I think this just sets up significant legal battles in an election year where there could be hypocrisy or other motives and we don’t know how this is going to play out, but it’s a terrible mess in Alabama right now for clinics and, most importantly, for patients,” he adds. Dr. Trolice.

As for my situation, my original REI (I’ve seen more) gave me the option to transfer my embryos to their clinic, where I can do a partial rejection. I can do that. I haven’t decided, as I would ideally like to stay at my current clinic, as I finally got pregnant there after four long years of trying, which included a lot of priceless trial and error with my first REI. But I do know that I want to move forward with trying to give my daughter a sibling.

I am one of many, many Americans who have fought not only against legal decisions like this, but against a health care system that continues to undermine women’s health. I can only hope that the future is less bleak, for the sake of my own daughter and future families everywhere.

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Source: HIS Education