AshLeigh Meyer Dunham, an attorney who specializes in helping families who are seeking services for infertility, is running for the Alabama Supreme Court.

Dunham is owner of Magic City Fertility Law.

She is also a referee in Jefferson County Family Court. Court referees conduct hearings and make recommendations to a judge.

Dunham and her husband are the parents of a daughter born through in vitro fertilization.

She is running in the Democratic primary for the Supreme Court seat held by Associate Justice Greg Shaw.

In a news release announcing her candidacy, Dunham talked about the court’s ruling last year that temporarily stopped IVF services in the state.

“I’ve spent my entire legal career standing with Alabama families—and now I’m all in,” said Dunham. “Our Supreme Court needs justices who understand the real challenges families face.

“The court has made some anti-family rulings that are wildly out of touch with the people of Alabama.”

In February 2024, the court ruled that for purposes of Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, frozen embryos held in storage by IVF clinics had the legal status of unborn children.

Clinics put IVF services on hold because of the legal liability from the ruling.

IVF doctors and patients converged on the Alabama State House and rallied for legislation to give clinics the legal protection they said they needed to reopen.

Lawmakers quickly passed a bill intended to provide the clinics immunity, and most services resumed. The bill did not address the court ruling that frozen embryos were unborn children.

Shaw concurred in the decision and wrote a special opinion. Seven of the nine justices concurred in the result, one concurred in part and dissented in part, and one dissented.

Shaw was elected to the court in 2008 and reelected in 2014 and 2020.

Dunham and her husband struggled with infertility for years. After two rounds of unsuccessful IVF, their doctor suggested a larger clinic outside the state. That resulted in the birth of their daughter.

Dunham said the experience motivated her desire to fight for access and legal protections to fertility services in Alabama.

“No family should have to leave their home state to pursue the dream of parenthood,” Dunham said. “I know what it means to desperately want a child, to fight for that chance, and to finally hold that miracle in your arms.

“That empathy drives my career, my faith and my life, and it’s why I’m stepping up now.”

Dunham is a Huntsville native who graduated from the University of Alabama and the Cumberland School of Law at Samford University. She has been a lawyer for 15 years.

At Magic City Fertility Law, she helps couples navigate the legal complexities of assisted reproduction, her campaign said.

Dunham becomes the second candidate in next year’s elections to raise the Supreme Court’s IVF ruling as an issue.

Blount County District Attorney Pamela Casey, who is running for attorney general, said she expects the ruling to be an issue in her race against former Supreme Court Associate Justice Jay Mitchell, who wrote the court’s main opinion in the case.

Mitchell, in his court opinion, acknowledged the potential impact of the ruling on IVF providers because of the liability concerns. But he said the court was bound by the law, not the consequences.

The ruling came in lawsuits filed by three couples whose frozen embryos were accidentally destroyed at the Center for Reproductive Medicine in Mobile.

A trial court dismissed the lawsuits, saying the embryos did not meet the definition of children under the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.

But the Supreme Court decision overturned that, ruling that under Alabama case law and under the state Constitution, the embryos were considered children.

The primary will be May 19, 2026.