WASHINGTON — Less than two weeks after Alabama’s Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are people and that individuals could be held liable for destroying them, the state’s lawmakers passed legislation protecting in vitro fertilization providers and patients from criminal or civil liability if embryos are damaged or destroyed.

The lawmakers in the House and Senate passed the bills Feb. 29. A unified bill could be put before both chambers for a vote in early March before it is sent to Republican Gov. Kay Ivey, who is expected to sign it.

The House bill passed with a 94-6 vote with 3 abstentions and a companion bill in the Senate passed with a vote of 34-0.

The fast action by both the House and Senate was in response to three IVF clinics in the state pausing operations in the wake of the state Supreme Court’s decision Feb. 16.

The state’s highest court ruled that an 1872 statute in Alabama, the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, which allows parents to sue over the wrongful death of a minor child, also applies to unborn children, with no exception for “extrauterine children.”

In its majority opinion, the justices also pointed out that the state’s residents in 2018 voted to amend the Constitution to include protections for unborn life.

The lawmakers’ quick action in response to the state court’s ruling was not without heated debate in both chambers about women’s reproductive rights and how the state defines when life begins.

Members of the Republican-majority House took part in more than three hours of debate with one lawmaker questioning if the bill could hurt Alabama’s status as a pro-life state and another wondering if what they were doing was simply a knee-jerk reaction to the clinics’ paused treatment.

“Is it not possible to do IVF in a pro-life way that treats embryos as children, which they are,” said state Rep. Ernie Yarbrough (R) who called the destruction of embryos as part of IVF “a silent holocaust going on in our state.”

A Democrat state representative said it was important to protect those using IVF treatments because they help many families who otherwise could not have children, while another said the bills were just a quick fix and not doing enough to help women.

State Sen. Timothy Melson (R), a retired anesthesiologist who sponsored the bill, said lawmakers were “getting into a deep subject as far as when life begins and abortion.”

The state Supreme Court’s ruling stemmed from an appeals case from three couples whose frozen embryos were destroyed in 2020 when a hospital patient removed them from where they were stored in the clinic and dropped them on the floor.

The parents had sued for wrongful death, but a trial court dismissed their claims, saying the embryos did not fit in the definition of a person or child.

“The People of Alabama have declared the public policy of this State to be that unborn human life is sacred,” Chief Justice Tom Parker wrote in his concurring opinion. “We believe that each human being, from the moment of conception, is made in the image of God, created by Him to reflect His likeness.”

Attorneys for the defendants — the Alabama fertility clinic, the hospital, and its owner — argued before the court that a wrongful-death liability for frozen embryos would significantly increase the costs of the infertility treatment and could also make it a burden to preserve embryos for the future. In an amicus brief, the state’s medical association said this liability could also mean that parents cannot opt to discard embryos and they would remain frozen.

While the decision was cheered by anti-abortion groups, it raised questions for many about its potential impact.

The Catholic Church has spoken out against IVF, particularly for the treatment of embryos.

“Donum Vitae,” a 1987 document by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, says IVF is never acceptable because it removes conception from the marital act and it treats a baby as a product, “violating the child’s integrity as a human being with an immortal soul from the moment of conception.”

The document also stresses that human embryos are human beings with rights and that “their dignity and right to life must be respected from the first moment of their existence. It is immoral to produce human embryos destined to be exploited as disposable ‘biological material.’”