Alabama Declared Frozen Embryos Are Children. Now the Same Legal Logic Is Spreading to a Dozen More States.

One Ruling, Nationwide Fallout

In February 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled in LePage v. Center for Reproductive Medicine that frozen embryos are children under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. Within days, three fertility clinics — Alabama Fertility Specialists, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and the Center for Reproductive Medicine — halted IVF treatments entirely.

Patients mid-cycle got phone calls canceling their appointments. Gabby Goidel, who had embryos in storage, told reporters she broke down immediately.

“I freaked out. I started crying. I felt in an extreme limbo state.” — Gabby Goidel, ABC News

Jasmine York, 34, who lost both fallopian tubes to ectopic pregnancies, said IVF was her only remaining path to having children. The ruling “completely derailed a lot of hope.”

The Fix That Did Not Fix Anything

Nineteen days after the ruling, Alabama’s legislature passed an emergency bill granting civil and criminal immunity to IVF providers. But the law did not change the legal status of embryos. Frozen embryos remain legally classified as children in Alabama.

Republican sponsors described the bill as a short-term patch and promised to return with permanent protections. They never did. Mobile Infirmary, the clinic at the center of the original lawsuit, shut down its IVF program permanently at the end of 2024, citing ongoing litigation risk.

The Numbers at Stake

Roughly 450,000 IVF cycles are performed in the United States each year, resulting in more than 100,000 births annually. The average cost per cycle is $15,000 to $30,000, and most patients need two or more cycles to achieve a live birth. Standard IVF practice requires creating multiple embryos, freezing those not immediately transferred, and sometimes discarding embryos that are not viable. Every one of those steps becomes a legal liability under personhood frameworks.

Personhood Bills Are Spreading

At least 38 bills with personhood language were introduced across 24 states in the 2025 legislative session. Some define life as beginning at fertilization. Others grant wrongful death claims for embryos. Several would charge women with homicide for ending a pregnancy.

At the federal level, the Life at Conception Act (H.R. 722), introduced by Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri, has 125 House co-sponsors including Speaker Mike Johnson. If passed, it would extend constitutional rights to fertilized eggs and effectively ban IVF nationwide.

Why This Is Not Just About Abortion

The Pregnancy Justice analysis is direct: personhood laws make it legally dangerous to create, freeze, test, or discard embryos. That eliminates the medical standard of care for fertility treatment. Clinics cannot operate under rules that treat routine procedures as potential homicides.

This affects the one in six couples who experience infertility. It affects same-sex couples building families. It affects cancer patients who freeze embryos before chemotherapy. None of these people are part of the abortion debate, but personhood laws do not make that distinction.

For more on the full scope of reproductive rights threats, see our Reproductive Rights hub and the Alabama state page.

What You Can Do

1. Contact your state legislators. Use Resist Bot to send a letter opposing any personhood bill in your state. Text RESIST to 50409 to start.

2. Call your members of Congress at (202) 224-3121. Tell them to oppose H.R. 722, the Life at Conception Act.

3. Check your state. The Reproductive Freedom for All tracker lists every active personhood bill by state.

4. Support fertility access organizations. Americans for IVF and RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association are leading advocacy on this issue.

5. Share this with someone going through IVF. Many patients do not know their treatment is at legislative risk. The threat is not theoretical. Alabama proved that.