Former President Donald Trump said Friday that he would “strongly support the availability of IVF" and called on lawmakers in Alabama to preserve access to the treatment. It was his first comment since an Alabama Supreme Court ruling that led some providers in the state to suspend their in vitro fertilization programs and has left Republicans divided over the issue. The comments come after a ruling by the all-Republican Alabama Supreme Court, among the nation's most conservative judicial panels,
Lawmakers began scrambling for ways to protect Alabama in vitro fertilization services after multiple providers paused services in the wake of a state Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos could be considered children under a state law. Facing a wave of shock and anger from the decision, legislators prepared separate proposals in the House and Senate that would seek to prevent a fertilized egg from being recognized as a human life or an unborn child under state laws until it is implanted in a woman's uterus. Justices cited sweeping language that the GOP-controlled Legislature and voters added to the Alabama Constitution in 2018 saying that the state recognizes the “rights of the unborn child.”