COLUMBIA, S.C. (WCSC) - After a court ruling in Alabama left in vitro fertilization services there in limbo, other states, including South Carolina, are grappling with whether the same could happen to them.

Now lawmakers in Columbia are taking action.

On Thursday, legislators gathered to announce bills they have filed in light of the Alabama ruling, with some sharing their own experiences with what can be a challenging and expensive procedure that is ultimately worth it for so many families.

It’s why they said they filed bills to protect IVF across South Carolina.

“To rip away the ability of parenthood is heartless, cruel, and unacceptable. This is personal for me. But for IVF, my family would not have the opportunity to expand,” Rep. Kambrell Garvin (D-Richland) and the lead sponsor of the House bill, said during a news conference.

This week, bills have been filed in both the House and the Senate and referred to their respective judiciary committees.

The bills’ sponsors are predominantly Democrats, with some Republican support.

But one leading Republican lawmaker said this legislation is not needed.

“What played out in Alabama can’t play out in South Carolina,” Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey (R-Edgefield) told reporters Wednesday.

Massey said he was not concerned, pointing to how Alabama has enacted a ban on abortion from conception, while South Carolina has a ban from six weeks into a pregnancy.

“That is what was a big part of the Supreme Court opinion down there. That’s not what our law is,” Massey said. “I am confident that IVF is protected in South Carolina.”

But supporters of these bills point to South Carolina’s existing abortion law, the six-week ban, also known as the “Fetal Heartbeat Law.”

It defines “unborn child” as “an individual organism of the species homo sapiens from conception until live birth,” and “conception” as “fertilization of an ovum by sperm.”

They said by those definitions, conception is happening outside the uterus through IVF.

“If the court looked at our statutes the way that the Alabama Supreme Court looked at their statute, there is, in fact, an interpretation that would lead them to be able to say the very same thing, that IVF in this state would be wrong because they could consider an embryo to be a child,” House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford (D-Richland) said.

These bills aim to protect IVF by codifying in state law that any fertilized human egg or human embryo that exists in any form outside the uterus shall not be considered an unborn child.

Without this addition, they argued IVF could be threatened in South Carolina.

“Family matters. We need to protect a family’s right to have in vitro fertilization,” Sen. Margie Bright Matthews (D-Colleton) and the lead sponsor of the Senate bill, said during Thursday’s news conference.

Gov. Henry McMaster told reporters Thursday afternoon that he had not yet read the bills or the Alabama court’s decision.

“But I think anything to allow and protect the ability of parents, people who want to be parents, to be parents, to have beautiful babies is a good thing,” McMaster said.