Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said Thursday that while she personally believes a frozen embryo is a baby, she disagreed with the Alabama Supreme Court’s in vitro fertilization ruling last week.
In an interview on CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper,” Haley backtracked again on her initial responses to the ruling, which found that frozen embryos are children in the eyes of the law and those who destroy them can be held to blame for wrongful death.
The controversial decision has enraged abortion rights activists and thrown into doubt the ability of women in Alabama to undergo IVF to become pregnant, as fertility clinics now weigh new and potentially onerous new legal liabilities.
Haley said she believed the judges ruled correctly under the state’s current legal guidelines. This was the former governor’s second attempt in less than 24 hours to shift positions after initially indicating she supported the ruling, telling NBC News on Wednesday that “embryos, to me, are babies.”
“I think that the court was doing it based on the law, and I think Alabama needs to go back and look at the law,” Haley said Thursday on CNN, adding that the closures of three fertility clinics in Alabama in the immediate wake of the ruling was especially concerning.
In the NBC News interview, Haley brought up her own fertility challenges.
“I had artificial insemination. That’s how I had my son,” she said. “One thing is to save sperm or to save eggs. But when you talk about an embryo, you are talking about, to me, that’s a life. So, I do see where that’s coming from when they talk about that.”
On Wednesday night, after her first response to the court ruling had raised eyebrows, Haley denied she had ever “agreed” with the decision in an…
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