An Alabama Supreme Court decision that gives fertilized eggs the same legal status as children is already influencing people seeking fertility treatment – and could have even broader impacts on hopeful parents and doctors.

In the main opinion, Associate Justice Jay Mitchell writes that Alabama has long held that unborn children are “children” under Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. Now, this ruling will extend to in vitro fertilization treatments, and starts the legal definition of a human life, and a child, at conception.

Read the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling online, here.

IVF, the process of fertilizing eggs outside the body and then transferring embryos to the womb, accounts for 2% of births in the United States, according to Resolve, a national organization that supports fertility treatments.

The case involves complaints against a Mobile medical center, where embryos stored at a cryogenic nursery were accidentally dropped and destroyed.

Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Parker utilized multiple Biblical references in his search for the definition of the “sanctity of life” to come to the conclusion that an embryo fits within the definition of a child.

“In summary, the theologically based view of the sanctity of life adopted by the People of Alabama encompasses the following: (1) God made every person in His image; (2) each person therefore has a value that far exceeds the ability of human beings to calculate; and (3) human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself. Section 36.06 recognizes that this is true of unborn human life no less than it is of all other human life — that even before birth, all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory,” Parker writes in the case.

Parker claims IVF is federally unregulated. He suggested looking to other countries as examples, such as “Australia and New Zealand where physicians usually make only one embryo at a time.”

In a dissent, Associate Justice Gregory Cook claimed the ruling will have disastrous consequences for the in vitro fertilization.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham health system has paused IVF procedures due to fear of criminal prosecution and lawsuits.

While patients can continue the IVF process up through egg retrieval, fertilization and embryo development is paused for now. Hannah Echols, a UAB spokeswoman, said they are “saddened” for patients who want to have babies through IVF.

Applying the wrongful death statute to in vitro embryos could drive up the costs of fertility treatment, result in Alabama’s fertility clinics shutting down and discourage doctors from practicing in Alabama, according to a brief filed by the Medical Association of the State of Alabama.

“The main opinion’s holding will mean that the creation of frozen embryos will end in Alabama. No rational medical provider would continue to provide services for creating and maintaining frozen embryos knowing that they must continue to maintain such frozen embryos forever or risk the penalty of a Wrongful Death Act claim for punitive damages. There is no doubt that there are many Alabama citizens praying to be parents who will no longer have that opportunity. And, there is no doubt that there will be fewer babies born,” Cook wrote in his dissent.

Cook says he wants the legislature, not the court, to decide whether to end medical procedures such as IVF.

“There is no doubt that the common law did not consider an unborn infant to be a child capable of being killed for the purpose of civil liability or criminal-homicide liability,” he writes.

“In fact, for 100 years after the passage of the Wrongful Death Act, our caselaw did not allow a claim for the death of an unborn infant, confirming that the common law in 1872 did not recognize that an unborn infant (much less a frozen embryo) was a “minor child” who could be killed.”

Cook noted a 1926 ruling that did not allow recovery for injuries during pregnancy that resulted in the death of a fetus.