An anti-abortion group last month sued seven Utah fertility clinics, claiming their disposal of embryos as part of the in vitro fertilization process violates the state’s wrongful death law.

The ministry Voice for the Voiceless believes it has a strong case because Utah is one of four states — Alabama, Louisiana and Missouri are the others — that have both a “fetal personhood” law and a civil wrongful death law that, the group contends, might apply to frozen embryos.

Other states offer opportunity for similar lawsuits: At least 10 have either a fetal personhood law — giving a fetus, embryo or fertilized egg the same legal rights as a person who has been born — or a wrongful death statute that might include frozen embryos, according to Pregnancy Justice, a group that tracks the issue and advocates for the rights of pregnant women, including the right to abortion.

“There’s a number of states that have laws like Utah’s that find that a person exists at a certain point, and that is conception,” said Frank Mylar, the attorney representing Voice for the Voiceless. He also represents another plaintiff, an anonymous woman from Ogden, Utah, who alleges in the lawsuit that she underwent an IVF procedure at one of the seven fertility clinics and was not informed that unused embryos would be discarded or about options to put her embryos up for adoption.

“Once that egg is fertilized, it actually at that point becomes a human being that’s entitled to rights,” Mylar said in an interview. “So every state that has that as a law, what we’re doing in this lawsuit would be very much applicable.”

The lawsuit illustrates the divide among many in the anti-abortion movement. Followers of a conservative philosophy known as “pronatalism” believe it’s imperative for Americans to have more babies. They want easier access to IVF, and President Donald Trump campaigned on making IVF more affordable.

So far, he has negotiated steep discounts on three IVF drugs and proposed allowing employers to provide separate health insurance coverage for fertility benefits, including lab tests, medications, genetic testing and IVF.

But the IVF process often involves discarding embryos, creating a conundrum for people who support IVF but believe that life begins at fertilization and oppose abortion. For anti-abortion purists, those embryos are unborn children, so disposing of them is no different from abortion.

The split on the political right drew attention in February 2024, when the Alabama Supreme Court, which consists of nine Republicans, ruled 8-1 that the state’s wrongful death statute applied to embryos. That decision cleared the way for couples to pursue lawsuits if their frozen embryos were destroyed. It temporarily halted IVF at Alabama clinics. It also ignited a national uproar and prompted the Republican-led Alabama legislature to immediately step in to protect IVF providers from legal liability.

But court cases and legislative efforts in multiple states show that the IVF debate is ongoing.

In Indiana and Ohio, courts have weighed whether frozen embryos are people or property in cases involving former partners who disagreed on what to do with their embryos when they separated.

In Kentucky, a judge earlier this month struck down language in the state’s abortion ban defining human life as beginning at conception, handing a victory to a Jewish woman who argued that the ban violated her religious freedom by putting her at risk of prosecution if she pursued IVF. The state has appealed the case.

In Kansas, a proposed bill this year would have made it illegal to destroy a fertilized embryo, though it died in committee. And Tennessee last year became the first state in the South to enact a law explicitly affirming the right to access IVF and birth control.

Kulsoom Ijaz, a senior policy counsel for Pregnancy Justice, predicted that IVF opponents will continue to use fetal personhood language to challenge the fertility procedure. Ijaz said that when fetal personhood language appears in one area of state law, “it inspires legislators to align their laws across the board, with these equal-protection-for-the-unborn bills.”

Then, she said, “courts use these definitions to then make case law in other areas of the law.”

Risa Cromer, an anthropology associate professor at Purdue University who focuses on medicine and reproductive politics, described personhood language as “a threat for broad swaths of reproductive health care needs that remain highly popular, IVF being one of them.”

“Personhood doesn’t explicitly implicate abortion miscarriage management, treatment for ectopic pregnancy, contraception, or IVF. In judicial interpretation, it absolutely is proving to be a threat,” Cromer said.

Utah lawsuit

IVF involves retrieving a woman’s eggs from her body and then fertilizing them with sperm in a laboratory. Any embryos that result can then be either transferred to her uterus or frozen for future use. Unused embryos can also be adopted, but many are discarded. And storing frozen embryos can be costly, from hundreds to thousands of dollars per year.

Louisiana is the only state that bans the destruction of IVF embryos. But fertility clinics have gotten around the 1986 law by shipping unused embryos out of state for storage.

The lawsuit says Voice for the Voiceless is morally opposed to IVF. But it also claims the clinics could perform IVF without discarding embryos by only creating as many embryos as will be implanted into their clients.

Mylar, the attorney, said defendants could change their clinic policies to comply with the state’s wrongful death statute “if they basically said, ‘Our intent is that you have every one of these fertilized eggs, and we’re not going to willingly or negligently or intentionally let them die.’”

Voice for the Voiceless President Kriss Martenson, named as a plaintiff, said in an interview that he does not believe IVF could be practiced without violating the law. He said the lawsuit is a strategic effort to apply fetal personhood language to IVF and to abortion at all stages. The lawsuit says the organization, which it describes as a nonprofit, has legal standing because of its efforts opposing abortion in Utah.

Martenson said he was inspired to file the Utah lawsuit by the 2024 Alabama Supreme Court decision and by the combination of Utah’s fetal personhood and wrongful death laws.

A victory in the lawsuit “could strengthen the legal arguments that the state has a constitutional obligation to protect human life from the moment of fertilization,” Martenson said. “So that’s what I’m showing in Utah, and I think that could affect other states.”

Discarding embryos

Disposal of embryos is common in IVF because for each single fertilization effort, multiple embryos are created to maximize the chance of success. Typically only one or two are transferred to a patient’s uterus, however, to prevent high-risk pregnancies of multiple fetuses. Some embryos are discarded because of chromosomal issues or genetic diseases, discovered during genetic screening in the lab. The Utah lawsuit charges that this is “akin to eugenics.”

Stateline contacted all of the clinics named in the lawsuit, but one declined to comment and the others did not respond in time for publication. The defendants have not yet filed written responses to the lawsuit. The seven clinics are: Conceptions Fertility Center, East Bay Fertility Center, Reproductive Care Center, Utah Center for Reproductive Medicine, Utah Fertility Center, Utah Fertility Specialists and Wellnest Fertility Clinic.

Susan Crockin, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center who teaches assisted reproductive technology law, said it is standard practice to inform IVF patients about their options around unused embryos. If the lawsuit is successful, Crockin said, it could severely curtail patient choice.

“The one thing that I think gets lost in this debate often is that a number of embryos that are not used for procreation … because they potentially have a genetic anomaly that is incompatible with life,” Crockin said. “So if every IVF embryo is considered a legally recognized person, I don’t understand what these anti-abortion, anti-IVF advocates would have us do with these embryos that will be sitting in cryopreservation tanks, or will not be making a viable human being.”

She added that “conflating every attempt to have a family with ‘every embryo in a freezer deserves to be put into a deserving womb’ feels very dangerous.”

Cromer, of Purdue University, noted that “the vast majority of religious Americans are supportive of access to IVF.” Cromer is a fellow at the Public Religion Research Institute, which found in a 2024 survey that majorities of white evangelical Protestants, Hispanic Protestants and Latter-day Saints both oppose laws that would make IVF illegal and strongly support laws declaring that human life begins at fertilization.

“So, these kinds of lawsuits, while there might be political opportunity for particular jurisdictions, such as the state of Utah, (are) completely out of step with what most Americans — religious Americans — want for themselves, their families and their neighbors,” Cromer said.

Stateline reporter Sofia Resnick can be reached at sresnick@stateline.org.

When the U.S. Supreme Court allowed Texas’ gerrymandered congressional map to take effect in December, its conservative majority wrote that a lower court had “improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign” when it blocked the map more than three months before the election.

Now, the Supreme Court is the one upending elections.

For the past two decades, the Supreme Court has advanced the idea that federal courts should not order major changes close to an election to limit voter confusion. Over time the doctrine, first articulated in the 2006 case Purcell vs. Gonzalez, became known as the Purcell principle. 

But election law experts and one of the court’s liberal justices say the Supreme Court is wielding — or disregarding — the principle unevenly in ways that aid Republicans.

In recent weeks, the Supreme Court has effectively allowed last-minute election changes in Southern states that hold major consequences for what districts voters are assigned to and the future of Black political representation across the region.

These Republican-controlled states are racing to redraw congressional maps to eliminate majority-Black districts, many of which have elected Black Democrats to Congress. The gerrymandering rush has come even with early voting underway in some states.

Wilfred Codrington III, a professor of law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, who has studied the Purcell principle, said limiting voter confusion is common sense. But after that general idea,  the principle “just falls apart” because the Supreme Court has never answered questions raised by the doctrine — like how close to an election is too close.

“The court has not thought through them and it seems like when the court applies them, they’re being applied in partisan ways,” Codrington said, about questions the doctrine raises.

April ruling OK’d redistricting

After the high court gutted the federal Voting Rights Act in Callais, a landmark decision on April 29 that found Louisiana’s map unconstitutional, it fast-tracked paperwork so the state could quickly redraw district lines. 

Voting had begun in the state’s congressional primary election, which Republican Gov. Jeff Landry suspended, discarding 42,000 votes already cast.

A majority of the court voted to immediately certify its decision instead of observing its typical 32-day waiting period. In a blistering dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that the justices were disregarding their previous insistence that courts shouldn’t risk assuming political responsibility for a redistricting process that often produces hard feelings.

“There is also the so-called Purcell principle, which we invoked only five months ago to chide a federal district court for ‘improperly insert[ing] itself into an active primary campaign,’” Jackson wrote. “The Court unshackles itself from both constraints today and dives into the fray. And just like that, those principles give way to power.”

The conservative justices on May 11 then cleared a path for Alabama to move toward implementing a Republican gerrymander that state lawmakers approved in 2023 but was blocked by a lower court. Their decision came a little more than a week before the state’s primary election. 

Republican Gov. Kay Ivey has called an August special primary election for some of the state’s congressional districts.

“The United States Supreme Court’s decision is plain common sense and enables our values to be best represented in Congress,” Ivey said in a statement.

‘Like it doesn’t exist’

The Supreme Court’s actions this spring stand in stark contrast to its December decision to allow Texas’ gerrymander to take effect. After President Donald Trump urged GOP states to redraw their maps for partisan advantage, Texas was the first state to respond, enacting new lines that could help Republicans pick up five seats.

A three-judge district court panel ruled against the map, finding that it was racially gerrymandered. The Supreme Court paused the panel’s decision, finding that the panel likely made serious errors and that the district court was “causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections” amid the campaign season.

That language echoed the Purcell decision, which found that an appeals court had erred in blocking an Arizona law requiring a photo ID to register to vote. The Supreme Court’s unsigned opinion cautioned that court orders affecting elections can cause voter confusion. 

“As an election draws closer, that risk will increase,” the 2006 opinion said.

Nearly 20 years later, the Supreme Court made no mention of Purcell in its Callais opinion, which dropped like a political bomb across the South. Since the decision, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and Tennessee have either enacted new maps or are seeking to do so ahead of the November midterm elections.

Mark Johnson, a Kansas City-based lawyer with a long history of working on election litigation, noted that Callais was argued at the Supreme Court twice, first in March 2025 and again in October. The justices then waited a long time before releasing their decision, he said, adding that if they didn’t realize the implications of their ruling they were “asleep at the wheel.”

“That’s why the Callais case is so disturbing, because a Supreme Court that has by and large followed Purcell just acted like it doesn’t exist,” Johnson said.

Court legitimacy at stake

Several high-profile observers of the Supreme Court have been unsparing in their criticism of the justices’ approach. 

Steve Vladeck, a professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center and a foremost expert on the court, wrote in an online post that the court’s recent decisions “fatally undermine” the animating purpose of the Purcell principle.

“The Court’s own interventions are now wreaking havoc—and a majority of the justices either don’t think it’s their fault, or don’t care that it is. Either way, they don’t seem to mind the inconsistency—in a context in which it’s having the remarkably coincidental effect of benefiting Republicans,” Vladeck wrote.

Rick Hasen, a professor at UCLA School of Law and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project, wrote on social media that the Supreme Court in Chief Justice John Roberts’ hands “has become a chaos agent in elections.”

Public support for the Supreme Court was dropping prior to Callais. An August 2025 Pew Research Center survey found 48% of Americans hold a favorable view of the court, a 22-percentage point drop from August 2020.

In the wake of the decision, Democrats have renewed their calls for court reform. Some have proposed term limits for the justices or expanding the size of the court to dilute its conservative majority. However, major changes are unlikely to become law while the U.S. Senate retains the filibuster and Trump remains in office.

For his part, Roberts has taken pains to paint the court as outside of politics. But at a judicial conference in Pennsylvania in early May, Roberts acknowledged the public thinks the justices are expressing policy preferences rather than interpreting the law.

“I think they view us as purely political actors, which I don’t think is an accurate understanding of what we do,” Roberts said, according to The Associated Press.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, another of the court’s conservatives, has drawn a distinction between federal courts ordering last-minute changes to elections and states making changes themselves — suggesting that courts shouldn’t necessarily thwart state legislatures that alter rules and procedures in the run-up to elections.

In a 2020 concurring opinion about a federal judge who had altered Wisconsin’s absentee ballot deadline amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Kavanaugh wrote that it was one thing for state legislatures to change their own election rules “in the late innings” and bear responsibility for unintended consequences.

“It is quite another thing for a federal district court to swoop in and alter carefully considered and democratically enacted state election rules when an election is imminent,” Kavanaugh wrote.

Chaotic campaign season

But voting rights advocates say Callais is unleashing a wave of voter confusion as Southern legislatures rush to gerrymander.

Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a map May 7 that divides the Memphis area among three congressional districts. The move splits a majority-Black district in Memphis represented by U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, a white Democrat. Cohen announced Friday he wouldn’t seek reelection.

The state’s primary election is scheduled for Aug. 6.

“This is a year where we’re already in the cycle and they’re going to have to redo everything they’ve already worked on because these districts are completely different,” Matia Powell, executive director of the voting rights group Civic TN, told reporters.

The Tennessee Democratic Party and several Democratic candidates, including state Rep. Justin Pearson, who is running for Cohen’s current seat, have filed a federal lawsuit against the map. They argue the new map will cause “significant voter confusion” and severely burden the right to vote.

Tennessee Republican Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti argues the Democrats have a solution in search of a problem. Tennessee lawmakers have provided more than $3.1 million to implement the new map and that state officials are already working to meet election deadlines, Skrmetti’s office wrote in a Wednesday court filing.

“At bottom, this suit is an invitation to play politics, not law,” Tennessee Senior Assistant Attorney General Zachary Barker wrote in the filing.

U.S. District Court Judge William Campbell, a Trump appointee, on Thursday declined to immediately halt the map.

The Supreme Court has sent states the message that “there are no rules” and that state legislatures are welcome to gerrymander Black representation at any point, said Anna Baldwin, voting rights litigation director at Campaign Legal Center, which has sued over Florida’s recent gerrymander.

And the way the court applies the Purcell principle encourages states to make changes close to elections — because courts are more reluctant to block them.

“The court is creating a perverse incentive structure that ultimately does make it harder for people who are trying to protect voting rights to prevail,” Baldwin said.