Sara Haines, Sunny Hostin Debate Alabama IVF Ruling In Tense Exchange

Sara Haines told fellow “The View” co-host Sunny Hostin on Friday that she was focused on “facts” and “science,” in a tense onscreen debate over a recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling on reproductive rights.

On Friday, the co-hosts of the daytime talk show discussed the fallout from a decision from the Alabama Supreme Court last week that ruled that frozen embryos should legally be considered “children.” 

Haines discussed some of the dangerous implications that could come from the ruling, such as restrictions on fertility treatments.

The show’s hosts had previously “talked about how egregious a six-week ban was,” Haines said, and “a fertilized embryo is three to five days old.”

“It is not alive outside of a uterus. It has no organs, it is not a life yet, it is not viable till it’s 24 weeks,” she added.

“You may not think that, but there are at least 50 percent of Americans—” Hostin said, interrupting Haines before Haines countered. 

“This is science, Sunny,” she said. 

Hostin continued, “Fifty percent of Americans believe that a human embryo is a baby — I’m one of them.”

The two co-hosts continued to go back and forth. Hostin invoked her personal experience into the debate, saying she underwent in vitro fertilization. Haines argued that Hostin’s personal experience “doesn’t mean facts change.”

“The embryo is an embryo until 10 weeks when it becomes a fetus, a fetus is not viable until 24 weeks,” Haines said. “If we’re going to use science, let’s use scientific terms.” 

Hostin then repeated her stance on when human life begins, adding that she has always had anti-abortion views. (Watch the clip below.)

Last week, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that couples who lost frozen embryos destroyed in a fertility clinic and hospital could sue for “wrongful death,” reversing a lower court ruling.  

Following the decision, the University of Alabama at Birmingham health system announced this week that its Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility paused services due to fear of criminal prosecution. 

“We are saddened that this will impact our patients’ attempt to have a baby through IVF, but we must evaluate the potential that our patients and our physicians could be prosecuted criminally or face punitive damages for following the standard of care for IVF treatments,” Hannah Echols, a spokesperson for UAB, told HuffPost.

Additional Alabama fertility clinics have since halted IVF treatments.

“We have made the impossibly difficult decision to hold new IVF treatments due to the legal risk to our clinic and our embryologists,” Alabama Fertility Specialists announced on Facebook Thursday.