Nine couples are suing an IVF clinic in Orange County, California, saying that the clinic knowingly implanted women with embryos that were deceased. The couples are asking for an unspecified amount of damages.
KTLA reports that attorneys representing the couples claim Ovation Fertility made errors at its Newport Beach lab, but then “knowingly implanted dead embryos into would-be mothers and then tried to conceal the laboratory mistakes that had poisoned the embryos.” According to a news release from Marcereau Law Group and Ikuta Hemesath LLP, the lab used “lethal hydrogen peroxide instead of distilled water during pre-implantation dethawing procedures in January 2024,” and “attempted a cover-up that sought to trick patients into signing waivers of legal claims and non-disparagement agreements.”
“Ovation Fertility only disclosed the incidents after the couples’ fertility doctors questioned why there was a 100 percent failure rate for the embryos that had been thawed over the two-week pre-implantation period, when the success rate was normally above 75 percent,” the attorneys said.
The implantations took place between January 18, 2024 and January 30, 2024, and after not a single woman became pregnant, they began to blame themselves. They underwent further testing to try to understand what went wrong. The clinic is said to have told doctors that temperature levels, pH levels, carbon dioxide, and other gas levels and incubator equipment failure were likely the blame for the loss of life, but the patients were eventually told it was the hydrogen peroxide used in place of distilled water.
Some who deny the humanity of preborn children have made the strange argument that human embryos “aren’t human,” and “aren’t alive” or they wouldn’t be able to be cryopreserved during the IVF process. Tragic stories like this defy that incorrect idea, proving that embryos are, indeed, alive when frozen in fertility clinics — and often, they die.
Science advisor David Prentice, Ph.D., previously told Live Action News that in the process of IVF with embryos who survive the thawing process, “… when thawed, the embryo continues its growth and development, picks up where it left off, and when implanted into the uterine lining can gestate. Molecular motion is not completely stopped but is slowed to infinitesimal rates.” Prentice noted that embryos are frozen when they have about 100-150 cells. “… The process doesn’t work for a newborn, or even a whole organ,” he said, because “there are too many cells to try to cryopreserve and will be too much damage from thawing” — however, this does not mean the embryo is not a living human being.
Brooke Berger, one of the women suing the clinic, said, “It was devastating physically and emotionally to learn that after I had endured all the injections, medications, and painful and invasive procedures, it ultimately was for nothing. We want to ensure that Ovation is held accountable for these entirely preventable errors and that this doesn’t happen again to other couples who are trying to grow their families.”
She and husband Bennett Hardy say the clinic destroyed their remaining two children.
In the lawsuit, Berger and Bennett (along with the other couples) said that Ovation Fertility “recklessly and wrongfully … exposed these embryos to lethal amounts of hydrogen peroxide (or some other caustic agent), which killed them.”
When the clinic called the couple a month and a half after the implantation to tell them what had happened, Berger was left “completely shocked.”
READ: Woman says IVF is a ‘cash cow’ that pro-lifers shouldn’t defend
ABC News reported that this is allegedly not the first error that Ovation Fertility has made. Plaintiffs were told that Ovation has hired inexperienced and untrained employees in order to cut back on costs and maximize profits. In addition, the couples claim that Ovation Fertility’s embryologists have lost embryos in the past, have frozen the wrong embryos, and have carried out biopsies incorrectly, causing harm to the embryos.
The lawsuit comes on the heels of the Alabama Supreme Court decision that allowed frozen embryos to be considered children under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. That case, LePage v. Mobile Infirmary Clinic, Inc. originated when the frozen embryos of several couples stored at The Center for Reproductive Medicine at the Mobile Infirmary Medical Center were destroyed after a client was somehow able to access the facility and handle the embryos, resulting in their destruction. Those parents argued that the embryos should be considered people under the state’s wrongful death law, and the state Supreme Court agreed in an 8-1 decision.
Ovation Fertility told ABC News in a statement that it has protocols in place to protect the “health and integrity of every embryo under our care.” It claimed that this “was an isolated incident related to an unintended laboratory technician error that impacted a very small number of patients.” It maintained that it did not knowingly implant deceased embryos.
