Alabama IVF ruling sparks off infertility scramble

Tucker Legerski and his wife, Megan, have spent more than two years and tens of thousands of dollars trying to have a baby.

- Carter Sherman

Married since 2021, the Alabama couple last year embarked on in-vitro fertilisation (IVF). After they retrieved eggs, a specialist combined those eggs with sperm to create four quality embryos. Last autumn, they successfully transferred one embryo, resulting in a pregnancy - but eight weeks in, it ended in a miscarriage. The couple had planned to attempt another embryo transfer this autumn.

But now, in the wake of an Alabama supreme court decision that ruled that embryos are "extrauterine children", the Legerskis don't know what will happen to their hopes of having children in Alabama. At least three Alabama IVF providers, including the Legerskis', have paused their IVF operations, leaving the Legerskis' remaining three embryos stuck in icy storage.

"The three embryos that we have, that are frozen right now, that we can't use as of right now, are very important to us and our best hope," Tucker Legerski said.

The Legerskis are far from the only prospective parents wondering what the future of IVF holds, both inside Alabama and beyond its borders. IVF patients and advocates in Alabama are rushing to figure out what the ruling and subsequent cessation of care means for their deeply time-sensitive plans. Outside Alabama, people are petrified that similar restrictions could soon surface in their state.