Less than a week after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos have the same rights as living children, GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley said she agrees with the court’s decision, which has already had a chilling effect on IVF—and could lead to further restrictions on abortion and potentially even birth control.
In an interview with NBC News, Haley said, “embryos, to me, are babies.… When you talk about an embryo, you are talking about, to me, that’s a life. And so I do see where that’s coming from when they talk about that.”
Asked if she expects rulings like the one out of Alabama to affect families using IVF, Haley responded: “This is one where we need to be incredibly respectful and sensitive about it.” Of course, siding with the premise of the Alabama ruling is anything but “respectful and sensitive,” given that it has already had a devastating impact on IVF patients in the state. On Wednesday, the University of Alabama at Birmingham said in a statement it was pausing IVF treatments in direct response to the decision by the Alabama Supreme Court. “We are saddened that this will impact our patients’ attempt to have a baby through IVF, but we must evaluate the potential that our patients and our physicians could be prosecuted criminally or face punitive damages for following the standard of care for IVF treatments,” the university said.
In the wake of the Alabama ruling, that threat of criminal prosecution or civil penalties is extremely real. The court’s justices, in a 7-2 decision, said that individuals can be be punished for the destruction of embryos under the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, which they declared “applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location,” adding, “the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act is sweeping and unqualified. It applies to all children, born and unborn, without limitation. It is not the role of this Court to craft a new limitation based on our own view of what is or is not wise public policy. That is especially true where, as here, the People of this State have adopted a Constitutional amendment directly aimed at stopping courts from excluding ‘unborn life’ from legal protection.”
Haley has been campaigning as a “rational” Republican in the GOP primary, but clearly, she’s not actually one. In addition to claiming embryos are children, she’s also said she would have supported a six-week abortion ban if she were still the governor of South Carolina.
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