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No, really. That’s pretty much what the Alabama legislature just did with a new law, hastily passed and now signed by the state’s governor.
As you know, Alabama created a firestorm last month when the state’s Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos in IVF clinics are the legal equivalent of minor children. This ruling sent shockwaves through the United States, pushed a new dimension of the Dobbs/abortion debate to the top of the national election debate and temporarily shuttered the state’s IVF fertility clinics. In response Alabama has now passed a law which appears to have created enough legal assurance to allow the state’s clinics to reopen. This is not just a win for reproductive rights in the state. Numerous couples had their ongoing fertility treatment halted by the ruling.
But as in-state critics have made clear, the new legislation is at best a band-aid rather than a solution.