'Bad joke': Alabama Republicans under fire from all sides over new embryo bill

Alabama Republicans were sent scrambling after the state's Supreme Court triggered outrage nationwide by effectively banning in vitro fertilization, but critics say the legislative fix they've provided only makes the situation worse.

The court's ruling, which stemmed from a botched fertility procedure lawsuit, held that frozen embryos were children under Alabama's strict anti-abortion constitutional amendments.

This would make IVF functionally impossible to administer by putting doctors under potential criminal liability for every embryo that is thrown away without being implanted — which is a necessary consequence of how the procedure works.

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The ruling was full of references to the Bible, and the court's chief justice, Tom Parker, recently proclaimed his commitment to Christian nationalism.

Alabama Republicans, fearing the political fallout, advanced legislation to shield doctors from civil or criminal liability for destroyed IVF embryos, which Politico reports appears set to pass.

This news sent critics flocking to social media to point out what they call a crucial flaw in the law, namely that it would make it impossible to punish doctors who botched the procedure through negligence.

"The Republican plan to 'save' IVF would make doctors immune from civil liability even if they screw up your IVF and destroy your embryos, costing you thousands of dollars," posted X user Armand Domalewski.

"They wouldn’t be southern republicans if their response to a political crisis wasn’t extremely broad tort reform," wrote Heatmap News' Matthew Zeitlin.

Right-wing commenters trashed the legislation too.

"As I feared. Now the couples who did IVF who generated this case will be completely screwed over because of a media panic," wrote user Chris Gast. "Damn, they are treating the embryos as less than property. America is a bad joke."

Some others pointed out the legislation also has a sunset clause after a year, which critics suggested was an attempt to punt the issue until after the 2024 election.

“'We finally achieved what we wanted and now all embryos are humans with rights! But also we’ll give full immunity to anyone who kills embryos until post-election because no one likes this,'” wrote user Garrett Wright. "The far-right doesn’t even want their ideas to come about, they just want to divide."