Alabama IVF ruling may halt uterine transplant program

The Supreme Court of Alabama’s ruling last week declaring frozen embryos at fertility clinics to be people has upended patient care there. The state’s two leading private in vitro fertilization providers as well as the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) paused all IVF procedures earlier this week while officials sort through the legal risks of continuing to create and store embryos and impregnate patients. But the impacts extend beyond would-be parents, to research. A uterus transplant program in which women conceive by IVF—one of only four in the country—is located at UAB, and its leader is also co–principal investigator on a related project studying uterine immune cells. If other states follow Alabama’s lead, other research, including efforts to improve IVF outcomes and probe developmental biology, could be imperiled around the country. “There’s research that is being done not just on uterus transplants, but on IVF, on eggs, and on embryos,” says Kate O’Neill, a reproductive medicine physician who directs the Uterus Transplant Program at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn). Such studies, she says, “are going to advance science, and if this spreads, [they] would be very difficult to do.” In its 8-1 decision last week, the Alabama Supreme Court overturned a lower court decision denying several parents the ability to recover punitive damages for the accidental loss of their frozen embryos. They sued a fertility clinic—the Center ...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research