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    Senate Democrats to force vote on protecting IVF access across the US

    Senate Democrats are moving to push through a bill that would protect Americans’ access to in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment, after an Alabama supreme court ruling that frozen embryos are children led to the closure of a number of infertility clinics in the state.The Democratic Illinois senator Tammy Duckworth said she would try to force a vote on the legislation on Wednesday which would establish a federal right to IVF and other fertility treatments that are at risk in the post-Roe era. Duckworth’s two children were conceived through IVF.“I’m headed to the Senate floor to call on my colleagues to pass via unanimous consent my Access to Family Building Act, which would ensure that every American’s right to become a parent via treatments like IVF is fully protected, regardless of what state they live in – guaranteeing that no hopeful parent or doctor is punished,” Duckworth said at a news conference on Tuesday.Duckworth’s move comes as Democrats vow to make IVF a campaign issue as they look to squeeze Republicans and highlight the continuing fallout of the overturning of Roe v Wade.“I warned that red states would come for IVF. Now they have. But they aren’t going to stop in Alabama. Mark my words: if we don’t act now, it will only get worse,” Duckworth added.The bill would require unanimous consent in order for it to pass, meaning that any one senator can block its passage. Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, said it was unlikely to receive unanimous consent from the chamber to rush the bill through.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile many Republican lawmakers registered disappointment over the Alabama ruling, at least one conservative senator was expected to object.Blumenthal said Democrats would not be deterred. He would not say what the next legislative steps would be, but he said Democrats, who control the Senate, would look for other ways to protect IVF and reproductive healthcare.“The IVF dilemma for Republicans is they are down a path that is not only unpopular, it’s untenable as a matter of constitutional law and basic moral imperative, and we’re going to pursue it vigorously,” Blumenthal said.“Today’s vote, the effort to seek a unanimous consent, we know is unlikely to be successful. Failing today is only the prelude to a fight ahead on women’s reproductive care centered on IVF and other steps that have to be taken to protect basic rights.” More

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    Florida delays ‘fetal personhood’ bill after fallout from Alabama IVF ruling

    Florida lawmakers have postponed a bill that would give fetuses civil rights after a similar ruling in Alabama has halted in vitro fertilization treatment at several clinics in the state.The “fetal personhood” bill had been gaining support amid Florida’s mostly Republican lawmakers. The legislation attempts to define a fetus as an “unborn child”, allowing parents to collect financial damages in the case of wrongful death, the Tampa Bay Times reported.But the bill has largely stalled after Democrats argued that the legislation could affect in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments, as seen in Alabama after the state’s supreme court ruled earlier this month that embryos created through IVF are considered “extrauterine children”. Since the ruling, several Alabama IVF clinics have paused services.The Florida state representative Dotie Joseph, a Democrat, told the Washington Post that the bill’s language did not protect IVF treatment from being affected.“We are exposing the healthcare provider to liability if something goes wrong,” Joseph said. “You have a situation where you are creating a chilling effect for people who are proactively trying to have a baby.”Florida Democrats have also warned that the new law could further affect abortion access, as fetuses gain additional civil rights rights under law.The Republican state senator Erin Grall, who sponsored the bill, said in a statement that she requested the legislation be postponed amid concerns.“Although I have worked diligently to respond to questions and concerns, I understand there is still work that needs to be done,” Grall said, the Bay Times reported. “It is important we get the policy right with an issue of this significance.”Other co-sponsors of the bill, such as the Republican state representative Jenna Persons-Mulicka, have reiterated that the bill is about the “value of the life of an unborn child”, the Post reported.It is unlikely that the bill will be passed in the current legislative session, which ends on 8 March, the Post reported.Following the Alabama ruling, other states have weighed similar bills that would grant fetuses rights, NBC News reported.At least 14 states legislatures have introduced similar “fetal personhood” bills, NBC reported, citing data from the Center for Reproductive Rights and the Guttmacher Institute. The surge is the largest increase of such bills since the overturning of Roe v Wade in 2022. More

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    Alabama is using the notion that embryos are people to surveil and harass women | Moira Donegan

    Something that’s important to remember about last week’s ruling by the Alabama supreme court, which held that frozen embryos were persons under state law, is that the very absurdity of the claim is itself a demonstration of power. That a frozen embryo – a microscopic bit of biological information that can’t even be called tissue, a flick laden with the hopes of aspiring parents but fulfilling none of them – is equivalent in any way to a child is the sort of thing you can only say if no one has the power to laugh at you. The Alabama supreme court is the final court of review in that state. It cannot be appealed. For the foreseeable future, frozen cells in Alabama have the same legal status there as you or I do. Is this an absurd elevation of the status of an embryo, or an obscene degradation of human beings? The answer, of course, is both.The decision immediately halted almost all IVF procedures in Alabama. Aspiring patents there – including women who had undergone rounds of injected hormone treatments and the invasive, gruelingly painful egg retrieval process in order to create the embryos – will now be unable to have the material implanted in an attempt to create a pregnancy. Hundreds of other frozen embryos – those that are not viable, or not needed by families that are already complete – can now not be destroyed as is typical IVF practice. They need to be continually stored in freezers, or what the Alabama supreme court refers to, in Orwellian style, as “cryogenic nurseries”, a term you almost have to admire for the sheer audacity of its creepiness.But the concept of embryonic personhood, now inscribed in Alabama law, poses dangers well beyond the cruelty it has imposed on the hopeful couples who were pursuing IVF in Alabama, before their state supreme court made that impossible. If embryos and fetuses are people, as Alabama now says they are, then whole swaths of women’s daily lives come under the purview of state scrutiny.Forget about abortion, which would automatically be banned as murder in any situation where fetuses are considered persons – Alabama already has a total abortion ban, without exceptions for rape, incest or health. Embryonic personhood would also ban many kinds of birth control, such as Plan B, IUDs, and some hormonal birth control pills, which courts have said can be interpreted as working by preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg. (In fact these methods work primarily by preventing ovulation, but facts are of dwindling relevance in the kind of anti-abortion litigation that comes before Republican-controlled courts.)Further, if embryos and fetuses are children, then the state may have an interest in protecting their lives that extends to controlling even more of women’s daily conduct. Could a woman who is pregnant, or could be pregnant, have a right to do things that might endanger her embryo in a situation where an embryo is her legal equal, with a claim on state protection? Could she risk this embryo’s health and life by, say, eating sushi, or having some soft cheese? Forget about the wine. Could she be charged with child endangerment for speeding? For going on a jog?These scenarios might sound hyperbolic, but they are not entirely hypothetical. Even before the Alabama court began enforcing the vulgar fiction that a frozen embryo is a person, authorities there had long used the notion of fetal personhood to harass, intimidate and jail women – often those suspected of using drugs during pregnancies – under the state’s “chemical endangerment of a child” law, using the theory that women’s bodies are environments that they have an obligation to keep free of “chemicals” that could harm a fetus or infringe upon its rights.Using this logic, police in Alabama, and particularly in rural Etowah county, north-east of Birmingham, have repeatedly jailed women for allegedly using drugs ranging from marijuana to meth while pregnant – including women who have claimed that they did not use drugs, and women who turned out not to be pregnant. In 2021, Kim Blalock, a mother of six, was arrested on felony charges after filling a doctor’s prescription during a pregnancy; the state of Alabama decided that it knew better than her doctor, and they could criminalize her for following medical advice.This is not an extreme example: it is the logical conclusion of fetal personhood’s legalization – the surveillance, jailing and draconian monitoring of pregnant women, an exercise in voyeuristic sadism justified by the flimsy pretext that it’s all being done for the good of children. Except there are no children. Lest this seem like an idea that will necessarily be corrected by political response, or by the ultimate intervention of a federal court on the question, remember that Samuel Alito’s majority opinion in Dobbs referred repeatedly to “unborn human beings”.There are several ways this supreme court could ban abortion nationwide, and they do not need to enforce fetal personhood to do so – many rightwing organizations, for instance, are encouraging federal courts to revive the long-dormant Comstock Act, from the 1870s, to ban all abortions. Nor will the ultimate national abortion ban necessarily even come from the courts. Any future Republican president will be under enormous pressure to enact a national abortion ban, and they will have many means at their disposal to do so even without congressional cooperation, be it through the justice department or through the FDA. Donald Trump, the Republican nominee in all but name, has floated the idea of a 16-week national ban – a huge restriction on women’s right’s nationwide that would undoubtably be just the opening salvo for even further rollbacks. Meanwhile, his nominal rival, Nikki Haley, responded to the news of the Alabama court ruling by voicing approval of fetal personhood. “Embryos, to me, are babies.”Let’s be clear: they are not. An embryo is not a child. Neither is a fetus. Treating them as such is a legal absurdity that degrades human life and insults the reality of parenthood. But most importantly: there is no notion of when personhood begins that is compatible with women’s citizenship other than birth. If personhood begins while a pregnancy is ongoing – if a person, that is, can be someone enclosed entirely inside another person’s body – then the competition of rights will be humiliatingly, violently, brutally one-sided. None of the opportunities, freedoms or responsibilities of citizenship are available to someone whose body is constantly surveilled, commandeered and colonized by the state like that. No citizenship worth its name can belong to someone who cannot even wield within the bounds of her own skin.It is humiliating to even have to say this: that women matter more than fetuses or embryos, that a frozen cell in a petri dish is not a human being, but we are. It is an absurdity to make this argument, an exhausting waste of our time, a degradation. That, too, is part of the point.
    Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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    ‘That’s a hard one’: Alabama senator flounders over state’s IVF embryo ruling

    Republican US senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama seemingly struggled to grasp the contradictory situation women have been placed in after his state’s supreme court ruled that frozen embryos are children.Asked at a conservative conference on Thursday what he would say to women currently denied the fertility treatment, the former college football coach replied: “Yeah, I was all for it. We need to have more kids, we need to have an opportunity to do that, and I thought this was the right thing to do.”But then when he was pressed on whether the ruling would negatively affect people who are trying to have conceive, Tuberville said: “Well, that’s, that’s for another conversation. I think the big thing is right now, you protect – you go back to the situation and try to work it out to where it’s best for everybody. I mean, that’s what – that’s what the whole abortion issue is about.”As a result of the ruling in question in Alabama, at least three IVF providers in the state have suspended services.“That’s a hard one,” Tuberville said when asked about IVF availability in Alabama. “It really is.”Tuberville said: “I’d have to look at what they’re agreeing to and not agreeing to. I haven’t seen that.”But he said that it was “unfortunate” if the women would not be denied the procedure.Tuberville’s spokesperson Hannah Eddins later sought to clarify the senator’s remarks, saying he had been “emphasizing his support for life at all stages”.“In addition to being pro-life and believing life begins at conception, Senator Tuberville is also pro-family,” Eddins said. “He believes strong families are instrumental to our country’s success.”Eddins added that Tuberville was “in no way” supporting the decision by clinics to halt IVF procedures.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Alabama court’s decision, released earlier this week, came in response to a lawsuit by a group of IVF patients whose frozen embryos were destroyed in December 2020 when a patient removed the embryos from a cryogenic storage unit and dropped them on the ground.With the ruling, Republican anti-abortion politicians are now in a bind between opposing abortion and supporting treatments that promote conception.Tuberville’s spokesperson said that the senator supported the US supreme court’s ruling that overturned the federal abortion right previously established by Roe v Wade. The court’s decision returned the issue of abortion rights back to individual states, many of which have outlawed the procedure in most cases.Tuberville’s remarks on Thursday came after his decision in December to end a months-long blockade of US military promotions over his opposition to a Pentagon policy that facilitates abortions for service members and dependents. More

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    Nikki Haley says she believes embryos created through IVF are ‘babies’

    The Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has spoken in response to the recent supreme court ruling out of Alabama, revealing that she believes embryos created through IVF are “babies”.In a new interview with NBC, the former UN ambassador expressed support for the Friday ruling by Alabama’s supreme court which deemed that frozen embryos are “children”.“I had artificial insemination. That is how I had my son … One thing is to … save sperm or to save eggs but when you talk about an embryo, you are talking about, to me, that is a life. And so I do see where that is coming from when they talk about that,” Haley said.Haley’s comments come after Alabama’s supreme court allowed two wrongful death lawsuits against a Mobile fertility clinic to proceed. The lawsuits stem from an incident in 2021 when a patient removed several embryos from the clinic’s cryogenic nursery.According to the lawsuit, “the subzero temperatures at which the embryos had been stored freeze-burned the patient’s hand, causing the patient to drop the embryos on the floor, killing them”.A statement released by Alabama supreme court justice Jay Mitchell said: “The central question presented in these consolidated appeals, which involve the death of embryos kept in a cryogenic nursery, is whether the act contains an unwritten exception to that rule for extrauterine children – that is, unborn children who are located outside of a biological uterus at the time they are killed.”Mitchell added: “Under existing black-letter law, the answer to that question is no: the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location.”Asked whether she has any concerns on how the court’s ruling could hurt people seeking IVF treatment, Haley said: “I think that we have to have those conversations … Let’s never underestimate the relationship between a doctor and a patient.“This is one where we need to be incredibly respectful and sensitive about it,” she said, adding: “I know that when my doctor came in, we knew what was possible and what wasn’t … Every woman needs to know, with her partner, what she is looking at. And then when you look at that, then you make the decision that’s best for your family.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHaley, who is currently trailing behind Donald Trump in the 2024 Republican presidential contest, has previously downplayed the federal abortion ban. Instead, the former South Carolina governor has said that it was up to each state to determine their limits on abortion.During her time as governor, Haley signed a bill into law which bans abortion at 20 weeks and does not provide exceptions for rape or incest. More

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    A State Court Ruling on I.V.F. Echoes Far Beyond Alabama

    Frozen embryos in test tubes must be considered children, judges ruled. The White House called it a predictable consequence of the overturn of Roe v. Wade.An Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling that frozen embryos in test tubes should be considered children has sent shock waves through the world of reproductive medicine, casting doubt over fertility care for would-be parents in the state and raising complex legal questions with implications extending far beyond Alabama.On Tuesday, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said the ruling would cause “exactly the type of chaos that we expected when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and paved the way for politicians to dictate some of the most personal decisions families can make.”Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One as President Biden traveled to California, Ms. Jean-Pierre reiterated the Biden administration’s call for Congress to codify the protections of Roe v. Wade into federal law.“As a reminder, this is the same state whose attorney general threatened to prosecute people who help women travel out of state to seek the care they need,” she said, referring to Alabama, which began enforcing a total abortion ban in June 2022.The judges issued the ruling on Friday in appeals cases brought by couples whose embryos were destroyed in 2020, when a hospital patient removed frozen embryos from tanks of liquid nitrogen in Mobile and dropped them on the floor.Referencing antiabortion language in the state constitution, the judges’ majority opinion said that an 1872 statute allowing parents to sue over the wrongful death of a minor child applies to unborn children, with no exception for “extrauterine children.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Was Alabama’s Nitrogen Execution ‘Textbook’ or Botched? Sides Are Divided.

    Alabama officials said the nation’s first nitrogen gas execution was a model for other states. Critics called it appalling and far from what the state promised.A day after Alabama became the first state to execute a prisoner with nitrogen gas, officials vowed on Friday to continue using the method in executions despite witnesses’ accounts that the prisoner writhed on the gurney for at least two minutes.Two very different accounts of the execution emerged from the state’s death chamber in Atmore, Ala., where the state executed Kenneth Smith, 58, on Thursday night.The state’s attorney general, Steve Marshall, called it a “textbook” execution that had made nitrogen hypoxia, as the process is known, a “proven” method that other states could emulate.“Alabama has done it, and now so can you,” Mr. Marshall said, addressing his counterparts across the country. “And we stand ready to assist you in implementing this method in your states.”Meanwhile, Mr. Smith’s spiritual adviser and reporters who also witnessed the execution described an intense reaction in which Mr. Smith violently shook and writhed as the gas was administered, began breathing heavily and, finally, stopped moving.The descriptions were at odds with what the state had promised in court papers: that the untested method of using nitrogen gas through a face mask would “rapidly lower the oxygen level in the mask, ensuring unconsciousness in seconds.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    Supreme Court Declines to Stop Nitrogen Execution in Alabama

    Both the Supreme Court and a federal appeals court denied stays sought by Kenneth Smith, who is scheduled to die on Thursday in the nation’s first nitrogen gas execution.The U.S. Supreme Court and a federal appeals court each declined on Wednesday to intervene to stop Alabama from conducting the nation’s first-ever execution by nitrogen gas, putting the state on track to use the novel method to kill a death row prisoner.Alabama plans to use nitrogen gas to kill Kenneth Smith, who was convicted of a 1988 murder, after the state botched its previous attempt to execute him by lethal injection in November 2022. Barring any additional legal interventions, prison officials plan to bring him to the execution chamber in Atmore, Ala., on Thursday evening, place a mask on his face and pump nitrogen into it, depriving him of oxygen until he dies.The Supreme Court declined to intervene in Mr. Smith’s appeal of a state court case, in which his lawyers had argued that the second execution attempt would violate his Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishments. The court’s order did not include an explanation or note any dissents.Hours later, in response to a separate challenge by Mr. Smith’s lawyers, a federal appeals court also declined to halt the execution over the dissent of one of the three judges who had heard the case. Mr. Smith’s lawyers said they would also appeal that case to the Supreme Court, potentially giving the justices another chance to intervene, though they have been reluctant to do so in last-minute death penalty appeals in recent years.Nitrogen gas has been used in assisted suicide in Europe and elsewhere, and the state’s lawyers contend that the method — known as nitrogen hypoxia — is painless and will quickly cause Mr. Smith to lose consciousness before he dies.But Mr. Smith and his lawyers have said they fear the state’s newly created protocol is not sufficient to prevent problems that could cause Mr. Smith severe suffering. The lawyers said in court papers that if the mask were a poor fit, it could allow oxygen in and prolong Mr. Smith’s suffering, or if he becomes nauseous, he could be “left to choke on his own vomit.”The execution is scheduled to take place around 6 p.m. Central time at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility, though it could be carried out any time until 6 a.m. the next morning. Mr. Smith has recently reported feeling increasingly nauseous as his anxiety grows about the looming execution, raising his lawyers’ fears about a mishap during the execution. Alabama prison officials said this week that they do not plan to allow him to have any food after 10 a.m. on Thursday in an effort to lower the likelihood that he vomits.Abbie VanSickle More