Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley said in an interview Wednesday that she agrees with a recent Alabama Supreme Court decision that found frozen embryos created through in vitro fertilization are considered people in the state.
“Embryos, to me, are babies,” Haley told NBC News. “When you talk about an embryo, you are talking about, to me, that’s a life. And so I do see where that’s coming from when they talk about that.”
Haley used artificial insemination to have her son, a different process than IVF that does not include creating embryos in a lab.
“I know that when my doctor came in, we knew what was possible and what wasn’t,” Haley said. “We also took precautions of how this was going to go and how it wasn’t so we knew before we went in exactly what we were looking at.”
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“Every woman needs to know, with her partner, what she’s looking at. And then when you look at that, then you make the decision that’s best for your family.”
The Alabama Supreme Court ruling came about from a lawsuit brought by a group of IVF patients whose frozen embryos were destroyed in December 2020 when they were removed from a cryogenic storage unit and accidentally dropped on the ground.
The justices ruled that Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act allowed parents to sue over the death of a minor child, which “applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location.” Alabama Chief Justice Tom Parker quoted the Bible in a concurring opinion, citing the sanctity of unborn life.
When asked about the consequences of the court’s decision for parents attempting to use IVF to build families, Haley said, “This is one where we need to be incredibly respectful and sensitive about it.”
The former South Carolina governor continues to call for “consensus” on abortion at the federal level. While Haley does support restrictions on abortion access, she also said she would not push for a national abortion ban unless she had the votes on Capitol Hill to pass it.
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In the wake of the court’s decision, medical providers in Alabama already have started limiting IVF treatments. On Wednesday, the University of Alabama at Birmingham paused IVF procedures following the decision due to fear of lawsuits and prosecutions.
Alabama is one of 13 states that implemented a total ban on abortions in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
