Local fertility clinic responds to Alabama Court ruling

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WDEF) – Legal battles have broken out after the Alabama supreme Court ruled frozen embryos can be considered children.

Would be Alabama parents seeking help from places like Chattanooga’s Fertility Centers are caught in the middle.

“These are patients desperate to have children. And what is happening is that they are being denied the ability to go through these procedures that may, for most of them, is their only option,” said Dr Barry Donesky, Medical Director at Fertility Center. 

Dr. Barry Donesky with the Fertility Center helps parents navigate the difficulties with in vitro fertilization.

“Less than 25% of embryos will actually have the ability to produce a baby,” said Dr. Donesky. “That is why in vitro fertilization, we compensate for that by dealing with multiple embryos and searching for the ones that really have that ability.”

According to the Fertility Center, 15% of the population will require fertility assistance in their lifetime.

Dr. Donesky says freezing embryos can make the IVF process much faster. 

“We have patients in this practice that have had three babies from one in vitro fertilization procedure, because we can keep the extra embryos frozen, and two or three years later, the patient can come back for another pregnancy,” said Dr. Donesky. 

The Alabama Supreme Court ruled only that embryos are covered under Alabama’s wrongful death statute.

However, Dr. Donesky hopes the Alabama Legislature makes the best decision moving forward.

“Hopefully the Alabama legislature will define it in the court ruling themselves they said well, ‘we are just going by the law’ if Alabama legislature wants to change it, so be it, they need to do that,” Dr. Donesky concluded.