ONLY ON 8: Steve Flowers’ analysis of efforts to change law on fertility treatments
ONLY ON 8: Action 8 News Political Analyst Steve Flowers is speaking on the chances that a bill to address fertility treatments in Alabama will be approved by the Legislature.
Some lawmakers want action after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are “children” under existing state law.
The ruling raises questions for medical providers and patients, including if they can freeze future embryos created during fertility treatment or if patients could ever donate or destroy unused embryos. Those questions have led some medical facilities, including UAB hospital in Birmingham, to pause fertility treatments until the issue can be addressed further.
Flowers says lawmakers already had two big issues to face in the ongoing session — school choice and gambling. A bill on fertility would be a third big issue.
Flowers says getting any legislation passed is hard and is much harder when it is controversial. He says it comes down to what lawmakers think are the priorities.
“School choice remains number 1, gambling is 2 and fertility, the new issue, becomes number three, and it may be far behind the other two with it being as controversial as it is. Having a new issue thrown at them, this is an issue that most legislators haven’t thought about,” Flowers said.
Flowers says a fertility bill needs a strong supporter, like Governor Kay Ivey, behind it.
He says Democrats and mainstream Republicans would support it. But he says the right wing of the Republican party likes the Supreme Court ruling that says embryos should be considered children.
He says now that there are three big issues facing the Legislature and not just two, it’ll be tougher to get any of them passed.
