The bizarre episode was at the center of lawsuits filed by three families that eventually reached the Alabama Supreme Court. On Friday, a panel of judges ruled that the embryos destroyed at the clinic should be considered children under state law, a decision that sent shock waves through the fertility industry and raised urgent questions about how treatments could possibly proceed in the state.
Yet the accident in the Alabama clinic echoes a pattern of serious errors that happen all too frequently during fertility treatment, a rapidly growing industry with little government oversight, experts say. From January 2009 through April 2019, patients brought more than 130 lawsuits over destroyed embryos, including cases where embryos were lost, mishandled or stored in freezer tanks that broke down.
Those errors have taken on new gravity as the anti-abortion movement aims to extend “personhood” to fetuses and embryos conceived through in vitro fertilization, arguing that they are “unborn children” and bringing cases to an increasingly polarized judiciary open to considering the idea.
The Victorian government is introducing legislation it says will make IVF clinics safer and more accountable following high-profile bungles by private providers.
As part of the changes, the state's health minister will have the power to personally intervene to cancel...
An anti-abortion group last month sued seven Utah fertility clinics, claiming their disposal of embryos as part of the in vitro fertilization process violates the state’s wrongful death law.
The ministry Voice for the Voiceless believes it has a strong...
Sophie and her husband are set to spend more than £100,000 in travel and medical bills as they fly between England and the US in their bid to have another child.
The couple are undergoing IVF treatment in New York...
Fifteen people, including five doctors, have been charged in Maharashtra, India, following an investigation into the exploitation of financially vulnerable egg donors.
A nearly 5000-page chargesheet was filed before a court in Ulhasnagar. The investigation began in February after a...
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