The Alabama Supreme Court's recent decision that frozen embryos can be considered children is beginning to enter the fracas of the 2024 presidential campaign, becoming another flashpoint in the battle over reproductive health with the issue of abortion likely to remain a salient issue in November.
In an interview released Wednesday afternoon, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley responded to the ruling in an interview with NBC News, saying “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,” she added later in the interview.
Haley herself used artificial insemination to have her son, which is a different procedure from IVF.
By nightfall, the former U.N. Ambassador sought to clarify that her comment about considering embryos babies was not an endorsement of the Alabama Supreme Court’s controversial ruling.
“I didn’t say that I agreed with the Alabama ruling,” Haley said in a CNN interview on Wednesday night. “The question that I was asked is: do I believe an embryo is a baby? I do think that if you look in the definition an embryo is considered an unborn baby.”
The former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina governor went on to emphasize that the “goal” when it comes to frozen embryos should be to “always do what parents want.”
“So any physician that is in control of those embryos, they owe it to those people to make sure they protect that embryo,” she added.
The former South Carolina governor’s comments came as Haley has sought to position herself as more realistic than her former GOP rivals when it comes to abortion, arguing for a "consensus" on the issue that can get enough support in Congress to actually pass. Haley, however, has said she would sign a national abortion ban as president.
The Alabama Supreme Court – which is completely Republican-dominated – sparked attention around the country when it ruled that a state law giving parents the ability to sue over the death of a child “applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location.” That, according to the court, included embryos.
“Unborn children are ‘children,’” one justice wrote in the unanimous ruling.
Experts are now warning the decision could have major implications for in-vitro fertilization as Alabama’s largest hospital on Wednesday said it is halting the practice for now as it looks into the legal implications. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), roughly 4 million births annually in the U.S., or 1-2%, are from IVF. The treatment can be a costly one, with the average cost of a single IVF cycle costing between $10,000-15,000, per Penn Medicine, and experts are concerned that the Alabama ruling could raise those costs further.
Democrats have sought to tie the Alabama high court's ruling to the Supreme Court's decision in 2022 to overturn the nearly 50-year-old decision in Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed the right to an abortion.
In a statement on Thursday, President Joe Biden made it clear that he thinks the two issues are connected: "Make no mistake: this is a direct result of the overturning of Roe v. Wade."
"Today, in 2024 in America, women are being turned away from emergency rooms and forced to travel hundreds of miles for health care, while doctors fear prosecution for providing an abortion," Biden said. "And now, a court in Alabama put access to some fertility treatments at risk for families who are desperately trying to get pregnant. The disregard for women’s ability to make these decisions for themselves and their families is outrageous and unacceptable."
"I know that folks are worried about what they’re seeing happening to women all across America," he added. "I am too. I hear about it everywhere I go. My message is: The Vice President and I are fighting for your rights. We’re fighting for the freedom of women, for families, and for doctors who care for these women. And we won’t stop until we restore the protections of Roe v. Wade in federal law for all women in every state."
Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday called the ruling "shocking," but "not surprising" in the aftermath of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health ruling that overturned Roe.
"I talked about it from the beginning when the Dobbs decision came down that we were looking at what potentially would be the beginning of the erosion of so many fundamental rights, in particular around reproductive freedom," Harris said, per the White House pool. "We have seen that states around our country have taken everything from an individual's ability to make decisions about their own body to access to reproductive health care, limiting how people can get access to reproductive health care in very substantial ways. We've seen clinics closed ... we have seen laws that would criminalize doctors and nurses ... for administering reproductive health care, and and we knew that IVF was always very much on the table."
"The irony of it all is that on the one hand, these proponents are suggesting that an individual and a woman does not have the right to end an unwanted pregnancy, and on the other hand does not have the right to become pregnant," she said, adding: "I think that everyone should understand we each have a responsibility and the ability to change this trajectory, and elections matter. President Biden has been very clear if Congress puts back in place the rights that the court took away that which means putting back in place the protections of Roe v Wade, Joe Biden will sign it. So, elections matter."
Since the decision in the summer of 2022, abortion rights advocates have seen major wins in states nationwide, including traditionally red ones like Kansas, Kentucky and Montana.
Democrats, who have credited their full-throated defense of abortion for helping the party have strong showings in the 2022 midterm and 2023 off-year elections, have shown no signs of easing up on highlighting the issue on the trail.
Biden held a major reelection rally with all four White House principals last month focused specifically on the topic and “restoring Roe.”
Biden’s reelection team also seized on Alabama’s ruling, calling it “MAGA” Republicans’ “latest attack on reproductive freedom” and seeking to put the blame directly on Biden’s potential 2024 opponent former President Donald Trump.
The campaign responded to reports that the University of Alabama at Birmingham health system, which includes the state's largest hospital, was pausing IVF treatments as it figured out how to respond to the ruling.
“What is happening in Alabama right now is only possible because Donald Trump’s Supreme Court justices overturned Roe v. Wade. Across the nation, MAGA Republicans are inserting themselves into the most personal decisions a family can make, from contraception to IVF,” Biden-Harris 2024 Campaign Manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement.
“If Donald Trump is elected, there is no question that he will impose his extreme anti-freedom agenda on the entire country,” she added.
Trump appointed three of the Supreme Court justices who were in the majority that overturned Roe.
Despite often boasting about his role in Roe’s end, for his part, publicly, Trump has not given details about what he would support if elected in terms of a national abortion ban. Instead, he has held that he would “sit down with both sides and negotiate a deal,” as Trump campaign National Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt reiterated in a statement last week.
However, a report from the New York Times sparked headlines last week after the outlet reported Trump privately supports a ban on abortion after 16 weeks of pregnancy.
When asked about the ruling on Thursday, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, a former GOP candidate for president-turned-Trump booster, declined to address it, saying instead: "I haven’t studied the issue so I’m going to let Nikki Haley continue to go back and forth on that issue."
While polling has shown abortion is extremely popular in the United States, there is less data surveying IVF specifically. The Pew Research Center found 61% of adults say health insurance should cover fertility treatments and 42% say someone they know or they themselves have received such treatments.
Spectrum News' Justin Tasolides contributed to this report