The Center’s Nancy Northup Discusses “Patently Absurd” Alabama IVF Ruling
In an interview with Kaitlan Collins on CNN, the Center's President and CEO highlights the damaging implications of the Alabama Supreme Court's ruling recognizing embryos as children.
In an interview on CNN’s “The Source with Kaitlan Collins” February 22, Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, discussed the implications of a recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling recognizing unimplanted human embryos as children.
“We’re seeing it all over, this erosion of reproductive autonomy. Of course we saw it in the reversal of Roe v. Wade with respect to abortion. But now we’re seeing it with families that want to create children being told that their decisions are not theirs to be made,” Northup said.
“It’s patently absurd. But what is really frightening about the decision is it uses the very concept—and I am quoting the decision—‘extra-uterine children,’” Northup said. “If it weren’t so scary in its implications, it almost sounds like a farce.”
Watch a clip of the interview:
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IVF: A Common and Effective Infertility Treatment
“In many ways, IVF is actually one of the great triumphs of modern medicine. . . About 2% of births in the U.S. results from IVF. Over 8 million babies have been born using this technology.” —Dr. Zev Williams, director of the Columbia University Fertility Center
About the ruling:
The Alabama Supreme Court ruled on February 16 that frozen embryos are children for the purposes of the state’s wrongful death of a minor law. The decision leaves medical providers and patients scrambling to assess its impact and jeopardizes the availability of in vitro fertilization (IVF), which accounts for approximately 2% of births in the United States.