The use of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (“ART”) is becoming more and more common, and those utilizing ART may have additional considerations when creating or updating their estate plan. This blog will focus specifically...more
On Friday, June 14, the Texas Supreme Court declined to consider a case that asked the Court to determine whether frozen embryos are persons or property under Texas law....more
After years of painful setbacks, Jocelyn and Joshua successfully produced three viable pre-embryos (fertilized eggs not yet implanted in the womb) through in vitro fertilization (IVF)....more
On 16 February 2024, the Supreme Court of Alabama published its opinion, “Supreme Court of Alabama, SC-2022-0515,” regarding whether embryos located outside the biological uterus are considered unborn children pursuant to...more
Recent legal developments in Alabama demonstrate that fertility care stakeholders should prepare for additional state regulation of in vitro fertilization (“IVF”) and other assisted reproductive technology (“ART”) services in...more
I. Alabama Legislation Following LePage - On March 7th, the Alabama Legislature passed SB159 (“SB159” or the “bill”), as a means of granting certain protections to IVF clinics and providers in the wake of the LePage v....more
In response to the recent turmoil caused by the Alabama Supreme Court’s February 16th ruling in LePage et al., v. The Center for Reproductive Medicine et al. and Burdick-Aysenne et al., v. The Center for Reproductive Medicine...more
We wrote last week about the Alabama Supreme Court case which held that under that state’s law a frozen embryo housed in a laboratory was a child as a matter of law and the parents of such a “child” had legal rights to...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: Last week, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that cryogenically frozen embryos are children and are protected from destruction under state law. This is the latest in a series of post-Dobbs judicial rulings...more
The Alabama Supreme Court recently ruled that frozen embryos, or “extrauterine children,” should be afforded the same legal protections as living children under a state wrongful death law....more
On February 16, 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court issued an opinion in the consolidated cases LePage et al., v. The Center for Reproductive Medicine et al. and Burdick-Aysenne et al., v. The Center for Reproductive Medicine et...more
On February 16, 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court issued a significant and controversial ruling that gave personhood status to unimplanted human embryos—a decision with considerable implications for in vitro fertilization...more
The decision was issued by the Alabama Supreme Court on February 16, 2024. The implications can be said to be national in scope as individual states step forward with their own interpretations of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s...more
Amazon Sued for Not Telling New York Store Customers about Tracking Biometrics - “Thanks to a 2021 law, New York is the only major American city to require businesses to post signs letting customers know they’re tracking...more
In 2021 two women were married. They moved to Pennsylvania where they decided to conceive a child through in vitro fertilization. One spouse, Chanel Glover formed a contract for the storage of her eggs with a local cryobank....more
In happier times and faced with fertility problems, Honeyhline and Jason Heidmann were married and willing to pay a third party to preserve frozen embryos should they want children. In 2018 the relationship fractured in their...more
Some Arizona couples are considering cryogenically preserving embryos they have created using eggs or sperm from themselves, their spouse, or even a future spouse. A recent Arizona law has made it even more important to...more
Generally, the European Patent Office does not allow claims to methods involving the use of human embryos for industrial or commercial purposes. It was therefore perhaps not surprising that the Examiner objected to the...more
In Oliver Brüstle v Greenpeace (Case 34/10) the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled that any non-fertilised but parthenogenically stimulated human ovum constitutes a "human embryo" within the meaning of...more
..The on again, off again nature of federal funding for human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research has created a great deal of uncertainty for academic scientists, major research medical centers, venture capital investors,...more
In March, President Obama signed an executive order lifting the Bush Administration restrictions on federal funding for human embryonic stem cell (HES) research. The possibility of new federal funding opportunities, in...more
According to the National Institutes of Health (“NIH”), “studies of human embryonic stem cells may yield information about the complex events that occur during human development… and could provide information about how...more