Another Alabama IVF clinic is to close at year’s end
By Isabel Rosales and Brammhi Balarajan, CNN
(CNN) — An Alabama IVF clinic that kept providing in vitro fertilization treatments even while others suspended them during weeks of uncertainty following a state Supreme Court ruling says it will close January 1 – further narrowing IVF options in a state that already had few providers.
“After 20 incredible years of serving our community, it is with mixed emotions that we announce the closure of Huntsville Reproductive Medicine,” Dr. Andrew Harper, medical director for the clinic in Madison, in a release posted this week on Facebook.
Huntsville Reproductive Medicine will stop accepting new patients after September 5, the release reads.
Huntsville Reproductive Medicine kept providing IVF services during weeks of tumult in Alabama’s fertility industry that came after the state Supreme Court ruled in February that frozen embryos are children and those who destroy them could be held liable for wrongful death.
Some Alabama IVF providers at least temporarily paused IVF services that month, with providers fearing the ruling would mean they could face legal repercussions every time an embryo did not turn into a successful pregnancy.
Harper chose not to pause services during that time of uncertainty. “If some DA or attorney general wants to come after me, bring it on,” Harper told CNN in February. “You better believe we’re not going down without a fight.”
State lawmakers scrambled to propose a law that would shield IVF patients and providers from liability stemming from the ruling. In early March, the state’s governor signed into law a bill aimed at providing civil and criminal immunity to providers and patients relating to the destruction or damage of embryos.
On Wednesday, Harper told CNN the clinic’s pending closure is not politically motivated, but after two years of trying to sell it, he made a personal decision to join a practice in New York.
He hopes to retire in the next few years, so this opportunity made the most sense for him, Harper said.
“I just need a change of venue and kind of ease into riding off into the sunset,” Harper said. “I’ve done this for 21 years.”
Current patients still will undergo IVF treatment as scheduled, Harper said in the news release.
Huntsville Reproductive’s decision comes months after an Alabama hospital said it also will end IVF treatments at the end of the year.
Mobile Infirmary will cease services “in light of litigation concerns surrounding IVF therapy,” it said in April.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists Huntsville Reproductive Medicine and the Center for Reproductive Medicine at Mobile Infirmary among eight assisted reproductive technology providers in Alabama.
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