Frozen Embryos Are Now Children Under Alabama Law
“Frozen embryos are “children” under Alabama law, the state’s Supreme Court says. Its decision could have major implications for the future of fertility treatments in the state.
Frozen embryos are “unborn children” and “unborn children are ‘children,'” Justice Jay Mitchell wrote in the court’s main opinion. Only two of nine justices dissented from the holding that an 1872 wrongful death statute applies to the destruction of frozen embryos.
The ruling seems to represent a turn toward judicial activism among members of Alabama’s Supreme Court, which for a long time held that the law’s text could not justify reading it to include “unborn children”—let alone frozen embryos.”
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“In IVF, the process of preparing the body for ovulation and harvesting eggs can be extremely taxing on women’s bodies, as well as time-consuming and expensive. After this, not all of the eggs collected may be successfully fertilized. And when viable embryos are created, it may take multiple tries at transferring one into a woman’s body before implantation is successful. For all of these reasons, it makes sense for doctors to collect myriad eggs at one time, fertilize these eggs, and then freeze the viable embryos for later transfer, rather than harvesting eggs and creating a single new embryo for each transfer. (This also helps people who may want to create embryos when they are younger to use when they are somewhat older, or who may face illness that will impede their future fertility.) And to maximize the chances of success, doctors sometimes transfer two or more embryos at once.
Treating embryos as having the full legal rights of children could imperil all of these practices.”
https://reason.com/2024/02/21/frozen-embryos-are-now-children-under-alabama-law/