The latest ruling said that “unborn children” applied even to embryos that had not been implanted in the uterus. The majority opinion pointed to a previous state Supreme Court ruling that said “unborn children” were covered in Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. The Alabama Supreme Court was considering a case brought by IVF-seeking parents whose embryos were destroyed by a hospital patient who was able to enter the cryogenic nursery where the embryos were being stored. “It is something that we need to be vigilant about, because this is the next frontier.” “Potentially, any of these broad laws could be interpreted to apply to IVF, it just depends on how far the state wants to go,” said Lourdes Rivera, the president of Pregnancy Justice, which defends pregnant people who face prosecutions related to their pregnancies. However, reproductive rights advocates fear that in any law that’s ambiguous about the legal rights of embryos lies a threat that those laws can be weaponized against fertility treatments. “This is probably left to the legislatures.” “Alabama law has uniquely evolved over the last decade, and I don’t know of any state that might reach a similar decision at this time,” said Clarke Forsythe, senior counsel at the anti-abortion organization, Americans United for Life. Amid a political backlash, some anti-abortion activists have defended the IVF ruling while downplaying the possibility that similar rulings will pop up in other parts of the country, absent additional new measures passed by lawmakers. The Alabama ruling has prompted several fertility clinics in the state to pause their services, as they assess the legal exposure the state court has created for them. That means that fertility clinics could face civil damages under the statute for the destruction of embryonic materials in certain circumstances. The Alabama high court’s ruling, handed down on February 16, said that embryos outside of the uterus were included in the definition of “minor children” in the state’s decades-old wrongful death statute. “If you’re trying pinpoint how many states this could happen in, you’re looking at not just at the wrongful death laws,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, “but the composition of the state supreme court, whether there’s personhood language in other parts of the state law or constitution, or whether a judge could interpret it that way.”