Alabama Supreme Court Rules Frozen Embryos Are Children

(NewsWorthy.news) – The Alabama Supreme Court ruled on February 16, 2024, that frozen embryos are children in an unprecedented decision that could carry alarming implications for those looking to receive vitro fertilization treatment. The ruling that embryos created through IVF are considered children by state law means that people could be sued for destroying an embryo.

Concerns were raised in 2022 about the dangers IVF treatment faced as anti-abortion campaigns saw several states looking to give embryos full human rights. Activists argued that such rulings would restrict access to and availability of the treatment in these states and that they could in practice render it illegal to freeze and discard embryos.

The decision means that two wrongful death cases against a Mobile fertility clinic can now proceed. According to the lawsuit a patient walked into the cryogenic nursery at Mobile’s Center for Reproductive Medicine and removed several of the embryos, only to suffer freezer burns due to the low temperatures used to store the embryos. This caused the patient to drop the embryos onto the floor and destroy them. After three couples who lost their embryos as a result sued the clinic for wrongful death, judge Jill Parrish Philips claimed that the state’s laws relating to the wrongful death of a minor did not apply to embryos and called for the dismissal of the case. The state’s Supreme Court has since thrown out her ruling.

In 2022 the unsuccessful Republican Senate candidate in New Hampshire, Don Bolduc, called the practice of disposing of embryos disgusting and portrayed IVF treatment as a form of eugenics. The Alabama Supreme Court has previously ruled that the use of drugs while pregnant could result in prosecution under the state’s law on chemical endangerment. In 2028, voters in the state passed a measure that granted full personhood rights to fetuses but did not specify whether it applied to frozen embryos.

The one dissenting judge in the ruling on frozen embryos, Justice Greg Cook, suggested that the verdict should have not been a judicial one but a legislative one and commented that the ruling would undoubtedly have a significant impact on many Alabamians. The ruling heavily featured Biblical references and nods to religious scholars ranging from Thomas Aquinas to John Calvin and claimed that knowingly destroying frozen embryos would incur the “wrath of God.”