On the eve of No. 11 Auburn basketball’s trip to Knoxville to battle the fourth-ranked Tennessee Volunteers in a game with major SEC implications, Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl wanted to address something “kinda personal, but also a little bit political” before jumping into the Xs and Os of Auburn’s matchup with Tennessee.

“My son Steven and my daughter-in-law Brittany, courageously in many ways, have decided to make it known publicly that they’ve been involved with this In vitro fertilization for a couple of years trying to have children, trying to start a family,” Pearl said to start his press conference Tuesday.

Hours before his press conference, his son and associate head coach, Steven Pearl, appeared on “The Next Round” to open up about he and his wife Brittany’s experience through the IVF process.

“Brittany and I, for the past year, have been trying to get pregnant,” Steven Pearl said. “It’s been a struggle to be completely honest with you and we’ve had to come up to Homewood a ton this past year at Alabama Fertility Clinic and work with Dr. Mann to try and get pregnant.”

However, after a ruling from the Alabama Supreme Court on Feb. 16 ruled that frozen embryos are “children,” Alabama Fertility Clinic joined two other Alabama IVF providers in pausing IVF treatments.

“We have made the impossibly difficult decision to hold new IVF treatments due to the legal risk to our clinic and our embryologists,” Alabama Fertility Clinic wrote in a post on the clinic’s Facebook page on Feb. 22.

This means that despite the fact that Steven and Brittany Pearl are nearing the end of the process and are just “weeks away from implanting a healthy embryo,” they, along with many others, are now having to wait.

Given the new ruling, IVF providers around the state now fear they could face legal penalties if they discard any embryos, hence their decisions to pause treatment.

As a result, pregnancy hopes for couples like Steven and Brittany Pearl are paused too.

“They are very, very close for Brittany to get pregnant. And it’s been a difficult process,” Bruce Pearl said Tuesday. “But because of what’s gone on in the Alabama Supreme Court, in what may be in some ways a reckless decision by failing to understand that IVF process… it’s about people trying to start families and create life, not end it.”

Bruce Pearl’s daughter, Jacquie Pearl, also sounded off on the matter in a post to X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter Tuesday.

On Wednesday morning, a gathering is planned on the front steps of the Alabama State House in what is being dubbed “Advocacy Day to Protect IVF.”

“I’d like to use my platform to call on all three branches of our state government and encourage them to make Alabama the most pro-family, pro-child state in the nation and removing the obstacles that are now facing these couples that are going through the IVF process,” Pearl said Tuesday.

“The government is supposed to help us and our families, not prevent my son and his wife from having their first child or my grandchild.

“And if you can and if you do, show up tomorrow, 9:30 on the steps of the capital and help your voices be heard. I don’t think that this was what the intent of the law was. It’s gotta be fixed.”