Health Law Advisor

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.

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 et al.  that pre-embryos are human children for the purposes of advancing a wrongful death claim, the Alabama legislature enacted a law intended to shield those who “provide or receive goods or services related to in vitro fertilization [(“IVF”)]” from any “action, suit, or criminal prosecution for the damage to or death of an embryo[.]” AL SB ...

Background

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 al., SC-2022-0579, in which the Court reversed a trial court’s dismissal of the plaintiffs’ civil wrongful-death claims and allowed the plaintiffs to move forward with a cause of action under the Alabama Wrongful Death of a Minor Act (the “Act”).[1] In so holding, the Alabama Supreme Court found that fertilized pre-embryos stored outside of ...

As employers are expanding their fertility, surrogacy, and family planning benefits, the tax treatment of such benefits continues to be a challenge for employers and their employees by both increasing the cost of these benefits and creating administrative hurdles. In a private letter ruling, the IRS maintains its position that the majority of the medical costs and fees incurred by a same-sex couple seeking to have a child through gestational surrogacy are not deductible “medical expenses” under Section 213 of the Internal Revenue Code. On January 12, 2021, the IRS issued ...