Persons-Mulicka said her bill “has nothing to do with abortion.” But when state Rep. Ashley Gantt introduced an amendment that would clarify the bill doesn’t apply to abortion care, the Republican-majority House subcommittee overseeing the bill blocked the amendment. “It definitely seems like it’s intended to provide civil rights to fetuses and potentially open up the pathway for there to be civil penalties for abortion providers,” state Rep. Anna Eskamani (D) told HuffPost.
The bill specifies that the pregnant person can’t be sued. But Florida Democrats and reproductive rights advocates raise that it very much leaves physicians, abortion providers, and fertility clinics offering IVF services vulnerable. The bill could even empower abusive men to wage legal harassment campaigns against ex-partners who have abortions—something we’re already seeing. And Florida Republicans have done little to quell these concerns.
The bill was first introduced in February 2024—right after Alabama’s Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos are “extrauterine children” whose destruction qualifies for wrongful death suits. Fertility clinics across the state briefly paused IVF services until the state legislatures passed an emergency law to offer more explicit protections for IVF. This is because IVF requires routine destruction of unused, frozen embryos, and the process itself takes numerous attempts, which destroy unsuccessful embryos in the process. As the anti-abortion movement increasingly embraces fetal personhood, opposing and restricting IVF is the natural conclusion of their so-called logic.
Widespread backlash against the Alabama ruling prompted Grall to withdraw her bill in 2024. But now it’s back, and so, too, is its threat to fertility services. According to HuffPost, most states allow individuals to take civil action for the “wrongful death” of a fetus, but specify that this applies to an “unborn child” that’s “in utero” or “carried in the womb.” The Florida bill does not.
“Is an embryo an unborn child? I think that falls outside the scope of this bill, but in terms of this bill you’d have to show a wrongful act, which is intentional or negligence in order to recover,” Grall unhelpfully said on the state Senate floor.
IVF has become a flashpoint in national politics after what happened in Alabama. While most Republican politicians have tried to distance themselves from the Alabama ruling, top anti-abortion organizations vocally opposed Alabama’s subsequent law to codify protections for IVF. They wrote a deranged letter to Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) last year that protections for IVF “will ultimately harm these families and jeopardize the lives of precious children”—referring, of course, to embryos. The letter then argues “IVF is not a morally neutral issue.”
Similarly, Pro-Life Action League and other prominent anti-abortion leaders criticized Donald Trump’s performative pro-IVF stance while on the campaign trail in the fall. “Though we share his desire for Americans to have more babies, Trump’s plan to fund in vitro fertilization for all American women is in direct contradiction with that hope,” Pro-Life Action League President Ann Scheidler told Politico in September. “Hundreds of thousands of embryos—each of them as fully human as you or me—are created and then destroyed or frozen in IVF procedures.”
The Civil Liability for the Wrongful Death of an Unborn Child Act could go even further, legal experts warned when it was introduced in 2024, as it could allow men to retaliate against ex-partners for having abortions. In Arizona in 2022, one man sued the clinic that helped his ex-wife have an abortion on behalf of the “estate” of her aborted embryo; the legal battle remains ongoing. Michelle Shindano, deputy director of government relations at Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida, told Rolling Stone last year that Grall’s bill “really opens the door for harassment from partners.”
Yet, the Civil Liability for the Wrongful Death of an Unborn Child Act unfortunately seems well-positioned to pass, as Florida Republicans hold a supermajority. The Senate hasn’t yet held a committee for Grall’s bill, while Persons-Mulicka’s bill has one more hearing and then a floor vote. It’s a pretty scary time to be alive right now, unless you’re a frozen, extrauterine embryo… which, of course, isn’t alive at all.
