Alabama voters weigh in on frozen embryo ruling

Alabama voters weigh in on a recent state Supreme Court ruling that gives frozen embryos the same legal protections as children and has halted some IVF procedures in the state.

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

An Alabama Supreme Court decision that gives frozen embryos the same legal standing as children has upended the landscape for reproductive rights in America. And the ruling effectively halted in vitro fertilization care in the state, something that Alabama voters are considering today as they cast their Super Tuesday ballots. Here’s NPR’s Stephen Fowler in Mobile.

STEPHEN FOWLER, BYLINE: It’s Super Tuesday, and Ollie Davison considers himself a super voter, but he’s not super enthused by the weather at the polling place in Mobile’s Toulminville neighborhood.

OLLIE DAVISON: It is looking nasty – wet, rainy, very, very chilly weather on election day, Super Tuesday.

FOWLER: Davison, who was out volunteering with the Alabama Democratic Conference, is also not super enthused that access to in vitro fertilization has become a controversial subject in recent weeks.

DAVISON: It makes me want to get out more. It makes me want to grab 10 other people and bring them to the polls with me, people who had never voted before or people who are on the fence about voting. It makes me want to do – stand in the rain at Michael Figures Park and say, hey, vote for these candidates because these are the best candidates.

FOWLER: When frozen embryos at a Mobile clinic were accidentally destroyed by a patient, families filed a wrongful death suit. When the conservative Alabama Supreme Court eventually took up the case, it found, under state law, that those embryos had the same rights as a child in the womb. That finding set off a firestorm of commentary and real-world consequences, 23-year-old Emerson Woodall said after casting her ballot.

EMERSON WOODHALL: It’s really – I mean, you already kind of saw, like, the IVF clinics are, like, having to scale…