A day after Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed a bill to grant legal immunity to Alabama’s in-vitro fertilization (IVF) industry, a group of left-leaning lawyers criticized the move.
Minneapolis-based personal injury lawyer Brendan Flaherty called the new pro-IVF Alabama law a “knee-jerk, simplistic response to a complex issue.”
“They’re saying the compensation for the loss of a human embryo and potentially your last chance to have children is the same as a fender bender,” Flaherty argued, referring to the Alabama legislature who passed the law in a near-unanimous bipartisan vote.
“Even if you think embryos should be just like any other property under the law, the law should allow a jury to decide what the property loss is — not the legislature,” he continued.
NBC News noted that Flaherty “has represented IVF patients whose embryos were lost due to faulty equipment.” NBC continued:
One of Flaherty’s newest clients said she recently had what might be her last chance at a biological child dashed by a now-recalled batch of a liquid solution used to promote cell growth while an embryo develops.
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“This was our last hope,” said the 39-year-old woman from Illinois who asked to remain anonymous because she hadn’t even told her family about the experience. “They’ve potentially taken away something that we can never get back.”
The lawyer follows many left-wing accounts on X (formerly Twitter) including VoteVets, a “progressive” political action committee (PAC) that backs Democratic candidates for office. Last year the group launched an ad attacking pro-life Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-AL.
In addition, Flaherty’s X account is followed by both Sen. Amy Klobuchar, and former Sen. Al Franken, both D-MN. In 2022, he shared a post conveying left-wing talking points about critical race theory (CRT).
NBC’s report also quoted Adam Wolf, another lawyer sharply critical of Alabama’s new law.
Wolf stated: “When nobody is providing oversight or supervision, all sorts of mistakes and accidents happen.”
“And so the answer to that should never be, ‘Well, let’s just immunize fertility clinics and contribute to the Wild West of the fertility industry,’” he added.
“This bill makes it seem like the greatest injury people face when their embryos die is the financial costs of their fertility cycle,” Wolf went on. “In reality, the financial costs are the smallest part of people’s damages when their embryos perish.”
Per NBC, Wolf has “represent[ed] families whose embryos were destroyed due to product malfunctions or lab accidents” as well as “several couples who later learned their child was not biologically related to them due to mishaps during the IVF process.”
In 2021, Wolf appeared on CNN to discuss the case of one such couple he represented.
“This is unfathomable for the rest of us,” the attorney told hostess Kasie Hunt at the time. “Daphna and Alexander gave birth to a little girl and months later found out that their child is not related to them. This has had disastrous and will have lifelong consequences for them. It is traumatic.”
According to his official bio on his law firm’s website, Wolf previously clerked for a pair of liberal judges who were both appointed to the federal bench by former President Bill Clinton.
Attorney Tracey Cowan also expressed concerns over the Alabama law. She told NBC that she thinks the newly signed legislation was an “overcorrection.”
The attorney called the IVF industry a “very lucrative” one in which “sometimes corners get cut.”
“So to give immunity for gross negligence or recklessness or even criminal intent is pretty unprecedented,” she stressed:
I have clients who have sold their cars, who have gone into debt, who are living on ramen just so that they can finance IVF services. But even with that great expense, most of my clients, in my experience, the financial damage to them is the smallest component of their damage.
“If you had all of your chances for children wiped out, and somebody said, here’s a check for 12 grand … that would be devastating to most people, and probably not what the legislators here intended,” Cowan said.
Again from NBC:
Cowan currently represents 140 people whose embryos were allegedly destroyed or damaged after contact with the same affected batches of CooperSurgical’s IVF solution that affected the Illinois woman’s embryo.
Cowan is the vice president of the Board of Directors of the Jewish Bar Association of San Francisco. The bar association’s X account follows several left-wing and far-left political figures such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT.
She also previously served as a partner at a San Francisco law firm alongside Wolf.
According to her online bio, Cowan
helped pioneer the [law firm’s] embryo loss practice group, a burgeoning area of the law. She has served as counsel on many of the most publicized cases in this practice area, working closely with plaintiffs, witnesses, and experts to vindicate her clients’ rights. Her work in this sphere spans the gamut of IVF clinic misconduct, from switched embryo cases to embryo loss and destruction.
CatholicVote Director of Governmental Affairs Tom McClusky weighed in on the three attorneys’ comments.
“Rarely do I agree with lawyers, yet in this case they are correct that when laws are written so poorly all it does is open the doors to the con men in the fertility movement, including the death-dealing IVF industry,” McClusky said.
LifeNews Note: Joshua Mercer writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.
