Huntsville IVF clinic to close in January, denies link to Alabama Supreme Court ruling

A Huntsville clinic providing in vitro fertilization (IVF) said Tuesday that its planned closing is not related to an Alabama Supreme Court decision earlier this year declaring that frozen embryos are children. 

Huntsville Reproductive Medicine announced Monday on Facebook that it would be shutting its doors in January 2025. In a follow-up post on Tuesday, the clinic stated that its “decision to close the practice was not related to the recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling.”

“This was sole[l]y a personal decision. We have been honored to serve this community for 20 years,” Huntsville Reproductive Medicine stated in a Facebook post but did not provide a reason for its closure.

Messages seeking comments were left with the clinic before and after its Tuesday posting.

In a February opinion, Justice Jay Mitchell wrote that an 1872 law allowing civil lawsuits over the wrongful death of children also applied to frozen embryos.  The decision led to sharp criticism from within the state and around the country.

The Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling, which allowed parents of frozen embryos to claim civil damages upon destruction, led to several IVF programs in the state to temporarily suspend operations. The Alabama Legislature passed a bill in March that extended criminal and civil immunity to IVF clinics for operations.

Corinn O’Brien, head of Fight for Alabama Families, an organization advocating for IVF access in Alabama, said that while it looks like the Huntsville clinic isn’t closing because of the Supreme Court decision, they are still sad that this means there is less access to IVF services in the state.

She said that there “is nothing more pro-family than IVF.”

“While we were very grateful for the Legislature’s quick action last spring, we are still very worried that we do not have full and permanent protection of IVF in Alabama,” she said.

Huntsville Reproductive Medicine said it is on track to complete IVF care for its patients before closure but will stop accepting new patients Sept. 5. 

To complete the IVF cycle before the clinic’s closure, patients must retrieve their eggs through October and initiate the cycle by Nov. 30. Embryos must be implanted by the end of December.

The clinic said they are currently devising a plan for the embryos, sperm and eggs currently stored at the facility. Patients may discard sperm or eggs, but due to the recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling, they are no longer discarding embryos.

The clinic asked patients to allow staff five business days to respond to questions.

“Our patients’ embryos are safe, and we are working on being able to give them many options to protect their family building goals moving forward,” the clinic stated Tuesday morning on Facebook.

Infirmary Health, based in Mobile and one of several entities sued in 2021 over the accidental destruction of frozen embryos at the clinic in 2020, was the first to permanently halt IVF care. The hospital system has temporarily resumed IVF treatments, but because of litigation concerns, IVF services 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.

Dr. Mamie McLean of Alabama Fertility said that the clinic is still performing “standard, state-of-the-art care” but that they have had to had conversations with patients already. She said that she’s seen patients who weren’t ready for IVF yet or not even considering the fertility treatment, but they now feel like they need to get started ahead of what may happen. There are others who may not want to get started because they don’t know what to expect.

“With regard to our practice, we’ve seen hesitation with starting care,” she said, but that there still are “men and women still struggling with infertility that need IVF care.”

She said “it’s a shame” when patients have to change their treatment plan because of this uncertainty.

The Legislature’s bill shielding IVF providers and patients from liability does not address when life begins. Democrats have argued that the court’s reliance on the 2018 constitutional amendment implies that the issue can only be resolved through another constitutional amendment. Republicans, who control both chambers of the Legislature, have shied away from addressing that issue.

Though lawmakers said they would establish a task force to study a more permanent solution, that has yet to occur, leaving families in an atmosphere of uncertainty as they make fertility treatment decisions.

Litigation over the law is continuing. Two couples who brought one of the two lawsuits that led to the Supreme Court ruling dropped their case with prejudice last month, meaning they cannot make the same claim in the same court.

Another lawsuit from Felicia Burdick-Aysenne, also filed in 2021, is still pending. A hearing in the case is set for September.