TALLAHASSEE—A Florida Senate panel approved a bill on Thursday allowing parents to be compensated for the wrongful death of their fetus at any stage of development, sparking debate over IVF and how claims would be litigated.
The measure, SB 1284, was presented by Republican Sen. Colleen Burton in Thursday’s Senate Appropriations Committee on Criminal and Civil Justice, stressing the importance of expanding the state’s Wrongful Death Act to unborn children. The party line vote came a day after the House passed its version on the Floor and a week after another Senate panel warned the bill sponsor to amend some of the bill’s language before its final committee stop.
As of Thursday, nothing had changed.
“We can have a wrongful death suit in the death of a one-day-old child,” Burton said, questioning why wrongful death suits can be brought for the death of a small child but not for a fetus in the womb. “This protects—includes, I should say—unborn children.”
The debate over the rights of unborn children has plagued abortion and IVF discussions in recent years, ramping up after Florida’s six-week abortion ban was muscled through the Legislature in 2023. The Alabama Supreme Court last year ruled that frozen IVF embryos have rights, which some critics blamed on the state’s expansion of the wrongful death act to fetuses.
Democrat critics raised these concerns, arguing that it could also lead to lawsuits from estranged fathers and burden juries with deciding how much a fetus would have earned had it survived.
“There would be some calculation if this bill passed of how much money this fetus would earn for the next 70-80 years,” Sen. Tina Polsky said. “Just imagine you’re a jury member in a case like this and you’re trying to figure out what salary a fetus would earn.
“I think that is a really insane calculation,” she added, later mentioning her fear that an enraged ex-boyfriend could attempt to bring a suit like this against a mother who lost a child.
Similar fears were raised in a committee meeting last week by Republican Sen. Tom Leek and Republican Rules Chair Kathleen Passidomo. Both expressed their “serious” problems with the measure, with Leek ultimately voting “no,” while Passidomo warned that she can’t see the bill advancing unless some serious changes are adopted.
Proponents of the bill, meanwhile, pointed out that SB 1284 specifically outlines that a wrongful death suit cannot be brought against the mother or a healthcare provider, and that an “unborn child” is already defined in Florida’s criminal statutes.
Bill sponsor Sen. Erin Grall noted last week that it is simply “creating parity” between the criminal and civil justice laws. The measure passed in a party-line vote and will head to the Rules Committee.
