Some service members and their spouses are concerned they may soon be forced to choose between military service and having a family following the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling last week that frozen embryos have the same legal status as birthed children.
The Feb. 16 ruling opens the door to potentially severe legal ramifications for unsuccessful fertility treatments. Experts and reproductive-care activists say fertility clinics now face civil or criminal lawsuits if embryos are discarded — a common practice if an embryo is determined to be unviable — or if an embryo were to die in the transfer process from one facility to another.
Lindsay Boreham, whose husband Peter is an active-duty soldier at Fort Moore, located in Georgia just across the Alabama border, told Military.com she is scared and frustrated about the ruling and how being in the military complicates an already painful situation.
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The couple lost their son in a stillbirth in 2018, after which they turned to IVF treatments to have another child. Boreham said the pair have spent more than $45,000 trying to grow their family, with recent costs including shipping a number of collected embryos to Washington state, where fertility care is more affordable and protected.
One embryo, however, was not transferred after testing as a “mosaic,” an embryo with a cell makeup that…
