In Slate Op-Ed, Professors Joslin and Ziegler Weigh Implications of Alabama IVF Ruling

Professors Courtney Joslin and Mary Ziegler wrote a Feb. 20 opinion piece for Slate about the potential fallout from an Alabama Supreme Court ruling, in a case involving in vitro fertilization, that frozen embryos are “children.” On Oct. 7, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review that decision.

“IVF in Alabama, and maybe beyond, will be a casualty of the American war on the right to choose abortion,” Joslin and Ziegler wrote.

Professor Joslin is a leading scholar in the field of family and relationship recognition, with a particular focus on same-sex and non-marital couples. She is a two-time Dukeminier Award recipient and the 2023 recipient of UC Davis Law’s Distinguished Teaching Award.

Mary Ziegler is an expert on the law, history, and politics of reproduction, health care, and conservatism in the United States from 1945 to the present. She is one of the world’s leading historians of the U.S. abortion debate.