MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A lawsuit that briefly halted access to in-vitro fertilization services in Alabama and sparked a nationwide controversy appears to be over.
Felicia Burdick-Aysenne and Scott Aysenne, who sought to make a wrongful death claim against a Mobile IVF provider over the accidental destruction of their embryos, filed a motion Friday to dismiss their case with prejudice against The Center for Reproductive Medicine and Mobile Infirmary Medical Center, meaning plaintiffs cannot make the same claim in the same court.
The filing did not state a reason for the decision but said each party will bear the “costs as paid.”
Messages were left Tuesday with attorneys for the parties. The news was first reported by Lagniappe.
Two other couples — James and Emily LePage and William Tripp Fonde and Caroline Fonde — dropped similar lawsuits against the same clinics in late July. The couples claimed that the cryongenic storage area in the Center for Reproductive Medicine, where their embryos were stored, was left unsecured in 2020, which allowed an individual to walk in and destroy the embryos.
The parties brought the two lawsuits together to the Alabama Supreme Court, leading to a February decision that halted IVF services in the state.
In a majority opinion, Justice Jay Mitchell wrote that there was no exception for frozen embryos under an 1872 law allowing civil lawsuits for the wrongful death of children, or under a 2018 state constitutional amendment that required the state to “ensure the protection of the rights of the unborn child.”
Alabama Chief Justice Tom Parker, concurring with the opinion, wrote “that even before birth, all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory,” which he argued was set in policy when Alabama voters approved the 2018 amendment.
The ruling led to several IVF programs in the state to temporarily suspend operations and sparked local and national criticism. The Alabama Legislature quickly passed a bill in March that extended criminal and civil immunity to IVF clinics for IVF operations, allowing programs to resume.
Mobile Infirmary has temporarily resumed IVF treatments at the hospital, but because of litigation concerns, IVF services at the hospital will be halted on Dec. 31.
The Center for Reproductive Health, the other defendant in the case, plans to move its operations to new facilities in Mobile and Dothan.
This article originally appeared in the Alabama Reflector, an independent, nonprofit news outlet. It appears on FOX54.com under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
