What Alabama Christians Should Know About IVF

Most Alabamians who oppose abortion have never thought hard about IVF. It seems like the opposite of abortion. Abortion ends a life, and IVF helps couples who long for children bring new life into the world.

But the question that settles abortion settles IVF too: when does a child’s life begin? If the answer is conception, then we have to look honestly at what happens to the children conceived in a lab.

Jump to a section

1. What does IVF have to do with abortion?
2. How IVF works, step by step
3. What Alabama's Supreme Court said
4. What the legislature did
5. They called it temporary
6. What Christian leaders are saying
7. Pro-life groups opposed the immunity law too
8. The same loophole as abortion
9. Grace, and a better way
10. What Alabama must do
11. Questions people ask

What Does IVF Have to Do With Abortion?

End Abortion Alabama works to pass one bill, the Equal Protection Act. It says a child is a child from the moment of fertilization, in the womb or out, and that these children deserve the protection of the same law that protects you and me from murder.

The Equal Protection Act doesn’t ban IVF. It doesn’t regulate fertility clinics or tell any couple how to have children. It applies the law against murder equally to every child, and it repeals the 2024 law that gives IVF clinics immunity when these children die.

So why does the IVF industry oppose it? Why are they so against changing the law to say that intentionally ending the life of one of these children is murder? Because they are slaughtering these children in droves. Clinics create children by the dozen, keep the ones they grade best, and freeze, discard, or experiment on the rest. By one estimate, more children conceived through IVF die each year than are lost to abortion.

A business with nothing to hide has nothing to fear from a law against murder. Their opposition is telling.

That is why we care about IVF. We didn’t set out to fight fertility clinics. But when Alabama’s Supreme Court said these children are children, the legislature rushed to make sure no one could be held to account for killing them. A child’s life is worth protecting whether he or she was conceived in a bedroom or a lab.

What IVF Is

IVF stands for in vitro fertilization. “In vitro” is Latin for “in glass.” Instead of a child being conceived in the mother’s body, the egg and sperm are joined in a lab dish, and the new child spends the first days of life in an incubator.

The first child conceived this way was born in England in 1978. Today IVF is common. In 2022, American clinics reported 435,426 IVF and related cycles for 251,542 patients, and about 98,000 children were born from them, roughly 1 in every 38 births in the United States (CDC).

Why Couples Turn to IVF

Most couples who try IVF are not chasing a trend. They want children and haven’t been able to have them. Common reasons include:

• Infertility with a known cause, such as blocked fallopian tubes, endometriosis or a low sperm count
• Infertility no one can explain, often after years of trying
• Age, since the chance of conceiving falls as a woman gets older
• Genetic testing, for couples who carry a serious inherited disease and want to screen embryos before choosing one
• Freezing eggs or embryos to try for children later, sometimes before cancer treatment
• Donor eggs, donor sperm or a surrogate, when a couple can’t conceive or carry a child themselves

The desire behind most of these, the desire to have children, is good. The question is what happens to the children made along the way.

How IVF Works, Step by Step

A typical IVF cycle takes about a month and runs like this:

1. Stimulation. For about 10 to 14 days, the woman takes hormone injections so that many eggs ripen at once instead of the usual one.
2. Retrieval. Under sedation, a doctor uses a thin needle to collect the eggs, often a dozen or more.
3. Fertilization. In the lab, each egg is joined with sperm, either by placing them together in a dish or by injecting a single sperm into the egg. Each egg that is fertilized is a new human being, a son or daughter at the earliest stage of life.
4. Growth and grading. The embryos grow in an incubator for five or six days. Lab staff grade each one by how it looks, and many clinics remove a few cells to test the child’s genes.
5. Transfer. Usually one or two embryos, those graded best, are placed in the womb.
6. Freezing. The rest are frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored, sometimes for years. Embryos graded poorly, or found to carry a condition the parents don’t want, are often never frozen at all.

One cycle commonly costs $12,000 to $25,000, and many couples go through more than one.

In Alabama, IVF is done at a handful of private fertility clinics and university programs, in Birmingham, Huntsville, Mobile and Montgomery. The 2024 court case began at one of them, in Mobile.

Of the children created in a cycle, few are born. Some are transferred and don’t survive. Some are set aside after grading or testing. Some stay frozen with no plan to ever be transferred, and some are used for experiments that destroy them, or thrown away like trash and left to die.

No one keeps an official count of how many of these children die. Using CDC data on more than 238,000 IVF patients in 2021, the Catholic News Agency estimated that 1.5 million to 1.8 million embryos created through IVF in a year are never born, while fewer than 100,000 are brought to term. Estimates of the frozen embryos stored in the United States run from several hundred thousand to 1.5 million.

IVF embryos created in the U.S. in one year

1.5 to 1.8 million never born

Fewer than 100,000 born

Every one of those embryos is a child made in the image of God, with the same humanity as a newborn.

Scripture doesn’t measure a person’s worth by size or location. “You knitted me together in my mother’s womb,” David wrote. “Your eyes saw my unformed substance” (Psalm 139:13, 16). God saw him before anyone else could.

What Alabama’s Supreme Court Said

In 2020, a patient wandered into the freezer room at a Mobile fertility clinic, picked up frozen embryos and dropped them. The embryos died. The parents sued under Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.

On February 16, 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled 7–2 in LePage v. Center for Reproductive Medicine that the act covers frozen embryos. An unborn child is a child under the law, whether in the womb or in a freezer.

The court only applied what Alabama law already says. In 2018, Alabama voters amended the state constitution to recognize “the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children.”

1. Nov 2018Alabama voters add the rights of unborn children to the state constitution.
2. 2020Frozen embryos are dropped and die at a Mobile fertility clinic. The parents sue.
3. Feb 16, 2024The Alabama Supreme Court rules 7–2 that frozen embryos are children under the law.
4. Days laterClinics pause IVF, citing the legal risk.
5. Feb 29, 2024In the House debate, the bill's sponsor agrees the immunity lets clinics keep discarding embryos: "Generally, yes."
6. Mar 6, 2024The legislature passes civil and criminal immunity for IVF clinics, with no expiration date. The governor signs it that evening.
7. May 2024The session ends with no long-term fix.
8. 2025, 2026Two more sessions pass. The immunity law is unchanged.
9. Oct 2026An Alabama presbytery calls the law "a legal license to kill our innocent preborn neighbors."

What the Legislature Did

The reaction was immediate. Clinics paused IVF within days. The University of Alabama at Birmingham said why: it had to weigh whether “our patients and our physicians could be prosecuted criminally or face punitive damages for following the standard of care for IVF treatments” (CNN via WSVN). Alabama Fertility Specialists cited “the legal risk to our clinic and our embryologists.” In other words, once the court said an embryo is a child, the standard way clinics handle embryos could be treated as a child’s death. The fertility industry’s own trade group, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, told the court that such lawsuits “will end IVF as it currently exists in the state of Alabama.” In the same brief it admitted that it is “standard practice for cryogenically frozen embryos to be discarded or donated” (ASRM brief). The national media called the ruling a threat to families.

Within three weeks, the legislature passed a law giving IVF clinics civil and criminal immunity for the death of or damage to embryos (1819 News). The House passed it 81–12, and the governor signed it the same evening, March 6, 2024. It applied retroactively, except in cases already in court.

During the House debate, a member offered an amendment to remove immunity from anyone who “intentionally causes the death of an unborn child.” The House tabled it, 65 to 26 (1819 News).

The legislature was asked whether clinics should be immune even when they kill an embryo on purpose. A majority said yes.

The bill’s House sponsor, Rep. Terri Collins, said as much in the debate on her version of the bill. Asked whether the immunity is there so clinics can keep discarding and destroying embryos, she answered, “Generally, yes.”

Alabama House debate on HB 237 (IVF immunity), February 29, 2024.

In October 2026, the Southeast Alabama Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in America called that kind of law what it is: “a legal license to kill our innocent preborn neighbors” (read about the overture).

No one gets a license to kill children. Not even IVF clinics.

Tell your legislators: no immunity for killing children. Ask them to cosponsor the Equal Protection Act.

They Called It Temporary

The lawmakers who passed the immunity law didn’t defend it as the right answer. They called it a stopgap to reopen the clinics, and they promised to come back and fix it.

In the House debate on February 29, 2024, a member asked Rep. Collins whether the legislature would come back to the law. “Within 365 days, roughly,” she said, adding that she wanted to “start working on the long-term problem as early as next week.” Members who didn’t like the bill said they would hold the sponsors to that. One told her, “I trust you and I believe what you say, that we’ll hold our feet to the fire.”

In the Senate, the sponsor, Sen. Tim Melson, called it “the temporary fix.” When the governor signed it, she called it a “short-term measure” and said there would be “more work to come” (NBC News).

The original bill had a safeguard to make sure they came back: it would have expired in 2025. The sponsors took the expiration date out (Alabama Political Reporter). The House also voted down, 71 to 21, an amendment to set up a study committee and begin work on a long-term answer right away (1819 News).

The 2024 session ended with no fix. Then the 2025 session. Then the 2026 session.

They called it temporary. It's still the law.

What Christian Leaders Are Saying

The presbytery isn’t alone. Across denominations, church leaders have warned about what IVF does to the children it creates.

More from them:

• The Southern Baptist Convention, the country’s largest Protestant denomination, adopted its resolution four months after Alabama’s ruling. It calls on Southern Baptists to “advocate for the government to restrain actions inconsistent with the dignity and value of every human being” (SBC).
• Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, welcomed the Alabama ruling and warned that “there are millions of frozen children locked in indefinite freeze and destined for destruction due to IVF procedures” (The Briefing). Urging Southern Baptists to pass the resolution, he described IVF as “an engineered system whereby multiple embryos are created only for most of them assuredly to be destroyed” (Alabama Political Reporter).
• The U.S. Catholic bishops, in a March 2024 letter to Congress from four committee chairmen, said IVF is “built on millions of children who are created to be destroyed or abandoned” (CNA via National Catholic Register).

These leaders disagree on plenty. On this they agree: an embryo is a child, and a process that creates children only to destroy most of them is a grave wrong.

Listen: The Overture’s Author and EAA’s Director

Pastor Allan Bledsoe, who wrote the overture, and Paul Abbott II, executive director of End Abortion Alabama, talked through IVF and Alabama law on The Westminster Standard podcast.

Where to start: 26:46 on what happens to “surplus” embryos, 39:32 on embryo screening, and 43:39 on how Alabama’s laws leave room for IVF.

Pro-Life Groups Opposed the Immunity Law Too

It wasn’t only churches. Before the governor signed the IVF immunity bill, thirteen national pro-life organizations, including Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, March for Life Action, Students for Life Action and Live Action, wrote asking her to veto it. She signed it anyway (Catholic News Agency).

Most of those groups don’t oppose IVF itself. They objected to blanket immunity and want IVF regulated instead, pointing to Louisiana, where the law forbids intentionally destroying an embryo (Catholic News Agency). But a child’s life shouldn’t hang on a regulation.

Abolitionist groups go further, and they have it right: killing these children is murder, and the law should say so.

• Abolitionists Rising reported the House vote under the headline “Alabama House Votes to Permit Murder in IVF Clinics,” and called the law the governor signed “blatantly unconstitutional.”
• The Foundation to Abolish Abortion, which drafts equal protection bills across the country, warns that “typical IVF practices involve the selective aborting, discarding, and indefinite freezing of preborn babies,” and says plainly that “our laws should ban the destruction of embryos” (FAA).

That is the Equal Protection Act’s position. It doesn’t regulate IVF. It repeals the IVF immunity and applies the law against murder to every child, from fertilization, in the womb or out.

The Same Loophole as Abortion

Alabama’s 2019 abortion law shut down the clinics, but it left two doors open. It shields anyone who takes abortion pills from prosecution, and it does nothing to protect children conceived in a lab (these tragic loopholes).

The IVF immunity law made the second door wider. Alabama’s highest court has said a frozen embryo is a child. But when an embryo dies in the course of IVF, there is no case to bring, whether the death was an accident or a choice.

That is not equal protection. A child’s protection under the law should not depend on where the child is or who wants the child gone.

If a clinic can't stay open without killing children, it shouldn't be open.

We don’t excuse anyone else from the law against murder because killing is good for business, and we shouldn’t excuse them.

Grace, and a Better Way

The longing for children is good, and the grief of infertility is real. Many Christian families chose IVF without anyone telling them what happens to the embryos left over. Many have frozen children in storage right now.

The overture puts it well: it calls to repentance anyone who promotes or takes part in the destruction of these children, and it points them to the grace and forgiveness of God in Jesus Christ. No sin is beyond that grace.

For families with frozen embryos, there is a way to give those children a chance at life: embryo adoption, in which another couple carries and raises the child. And for couples facing infertility, there are treatments that don’t create children only to discard them.

What Alabama Must Do

A church court can call sin what it is. Only the legislature can change the law.

The Equal Protection Act would protect every preborn child under the same homicide laws that protect everyone else, with no exception for how the child was conceived or where the child is. It removes the words “in utero” from the law’s definition of a person, so a child conceived in a lab is protected the same as a child in the womb. That is the standard Alabama’s own Supreme Court applied in 2024, and the legislature walked away from it.

And the bill repeals the 2024 IVF immunity law. The legislature promised to fix that law and never did. The Equal Protection Act does, because the law against murder should have no exception for IVF clinics.

Ask your legislators to cosponsor the Equal Protection Act. Sign the petition and we will make sure they hear from you.

Passing it takes pressure on every lawmaker before and during the 2027 session: ads in their districts, mail, and supporters who show up. Donate to pass the Equal Protection Act.

Questions People Ask

Isn't IVF pro-life? It brings children into the world.

The children born through IVF are a gift, made in God’s image and loved by their families. Nothing here takes away from them. The problem is how IVF is usually done. Clinics create more children than they plan to transfer, keep the ones they grade best, and freeze or discard the rest. Few are ever born, and most of them die in the lab or the freezer. Many couples going through IVF don’t realize this. They come to a doctor for help having a baby, and are often never told plainly how many of their children will be frozen indefinitely or destroyed along the way.

Is an embryo really a child?

Yes. From fertilization, an embryo is a distinct, living human being with his or her own DNA. Every one of us was once an embryo. Alabama’s Supreme Court said so in 2024, and Alabama’s constitution recognizes “the rights of unborn children.”

What happens to frozen embryos?

Parents can keep them frozen for a yearly storage fee, transfer them in a later pregnancy, donate them to another couple through embryo adoption, donate them to research, or have them thawed and discarded. Only the first three keep the child alive.

Would the Equal Protection Act ban IVF?

No. It doesn’t regulate fertility clinics or ban having children with medical help. It makes intentionally killing a child murder, from fertilization on, in the womb or out, the same as killing anyone else, and it repeals the 2024 law that shields IVF clinics when embryos die. IVF done without destroying embryos, such as creating only as many children as will be transferred, would not run afoul of it. If a clinic can’t stay open without killing children, it shouldn’t be open.

Didn't the legislature promise to fix the IVF law?

Yes. The sponsors called it temporary and promised a long-term fix “within 365 days.” Then they removed the 2025 expiration date that would have made them come back. Three sessions later, the law hasn’t changed. The Equal Protection Act repeals it.

Then why does the IVF industry oppose the Equal Protection Act?

Because the bill says embryos are children from fertilization, in the womb or out, and that intentionally ending their lives is murder. The industry destroys these children by the hundreds of thousands every year. A law that only outlaws murder threatens them only because of what they do. Their opposition is telling.

What about families who already have frozen embryos?

A new criminal law can’t punish anything done before it passed. Families with children in storage today can still give them a chance at life, by transferring them or through embryo adoption.

Are there other options for couples facing infertility?

Yes. Restorative reproductive medicine looks for the cause of infertility, such as hormone problems, endometriosis or blocked tubes, and treats it so a couple can conceive naturally. Adoption, including embryo adoption, is another way to welcome children.

What can I do?

Ask your legislators to cosponsor the Equal Protection Act. Sign the petition, donate to pass it, share this article with your pastor, and pray for the families and the children involved.