When Heather Maurer first saw on the news that the Alabama Supreme Court had ruled that frozen embryos could be considered “extrauterine babies” under state law, she didn’t think much of it.
She and her husband, Chris Maurer, had already made an appointment in March to transfer their final embryo – implanting it in the uterus to start the pregnancy – at a fertility center in Birmingham. The couple, who began fertility treatments more than four years ago in Alabama before moving to Sacramento, had already purchased plane tickets.
But hours later, Maurer received a call from his doctor.
The clinic has suspended all IVF procedures until further notice, the doctor told her. Furthermore, it would not be possible to transfer the embryos to another clinic. Maurer’s plans to have a second child were now in a state of uncertainty.
“I honestly cried for a couple hours, just not knowing what to do,” Maurer, 38, said. She had her 19-month-old son, Maximus, thanks to IVF treatment in Birmingham.
The Maurers are one of many families who will now have their reproductive care interrupted following a court ruling that frozen embryos created during fertility treatments can be considered children under state law.
In addition to disappointment and confusion about the future of their care, some of these families are also facing huge unexpected expenses as they struggle to find a way to continue their care. Just transporting embryos can cost thousands of dollars.
For Maurer, who works as an intensive care nurse, it would cost about $4,000 to transport her embryos out of state — if that were possible, she said — plus nearly $10,000 to restart treatment in California. That estimate does not include the family law attorney the couple is considering hiring to help them navigate the state’s new ruling; the lawyer charges $350 an hour plus a $5,000 retainer, Maurer told MarketWatch.
Maurer’s family turned to GoFundMe for support, hoping to raise $2,000 to help defray those unexpected costs. By Tuesday they had received donations of $550.
“We have already waited years and now we have to pay these legal fees and unnecessary costs to get our embryo [that belongs to me] transferred to us,” Maurer said.
“We have already used all our savings for IVF. We just don’t know what to do,” she added. “I’m devastated.”
Why are Alabama families rushing to transfer embryos?
The Alabama Supreme Court ruling complicates a treatment that in most cases requires multiple lab-grown embryos for a single viable pregnancy, said Dr. Kara Goldman, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Feinberg School of Northwestern University Medicine.
During a typical IVF process, doctors collect eggs from a patient. Then, in the laboratory, the eggs are fertilized and an embryo is grown.
But “reproduction is inefficient,” Goldman said, and there are many things that could go wrong at every stage of the IVF process.
When doctors collect eggs, only a portion of them are viable and can produce an embryo. Even for a patient at peak fertility, he said, only about 60 percent of embryos have no chromosomal abnormalities.
“It’s really critical for the IVF process to start with a reasonable number of embryos, because we expect attrition,” she said.
There are more than a million embryos stored in the United States, the Wall Street Journal reported.
But under Alabama’s recent ruling, those embryos are now considered children under state law. The justices ruled that an 1872 state law that allows parents to sue for the wrongful death of a minor child “applies to all unborn children, regardless of their place of residence.”
Several Alabama clinics have stopped IVF services while they determine the legal implications of the decision. This has led some families to go to great lengths to transfer their embryos out of Alabama.
CryoFuture, a California-based company specializing in embryo shipping and storage technology, has received “so many inquiries” from Alabama patients since the ruling, said Devin Monahan, CryoFuture’s senior vice president of business development.
The company is offering discounted prices for people affected by the ruling — about $500 for shipping, instead of the usual $800 to $1,200 — and is starting to schedule transportation for requests it receives, Monahan told MarketWatch.
In a state where residents already have relatively limited access to fertility care — clinics are rarer in Alabama and the state does not require private insurers to cover fertility treatments — the ruling complicates a medical trial very personal for many families, Goldman said.
“The fact that this is being legislated is fundamentally problematic. In fact, that’s really an understatement,” she said. “Patients are really held hostage by this.”
“I have never been so disappointed”
When Caroline Veazey, 30, heard the news of the court ruling, she was “shocked, but not scared,” she told MarketWatch.
But once clinics started stopping treatments, she panicked and immediately started calculating how much it might cost to move her six healthy embryos out of her Birmingham clinic.
Since it cost her about $2,000 to have a vial of sperm shipped to her to begin treatment — Veazey and her partner are one of many same-sex couples pursuing IVF — she knew the costs would be significant. That’s when she decided to launch her GoFundMe page, which had raised about $6,100 as of Tuesday morning.
“In my mind, I was thinking, ‘I don’t even have a circle that big; I’ll probably get something like 100 bucks,’” Veazey said. “But I thought I really had to try.”
Even if Veazey, a licensed professional counselor, can raise enough money to help defray the costs, there may be other obstacles. Her clinic has informed her that he must amend the paperwork needed to authorize the release of the embryos before Veazey can have them transported elsewhere.
“I know my clinic has to be careful,” Veazey said. “But I want my embryos out of Alabama as soon as possible.”
“I don’t have access to what my body has gone through and, amazingly, created,” she continued. “In my wildest dreams, I could never have imagined something like this could happen.”
Alabama lawmakers rushed to pass legislation protecting IVF services in the state, CBS reported, crafting separate proposals in the state House and Senate that seek to prevent a fertilized egg from being recognized as life Human.
Meanwhile, women like Veazey remain in emotional and financial limbo.
“One moment I’m angry; the next day I’m in tears,” she said. “I have never been so disappointed in the state of Alabama.”
Zoe Han contributed.