ALABAMA SUPREME COURT RULES FROZEN EMBRYOS ARE HUMANS

Washington Examiner

 

Embryos are human: Alabama’s Supreme Court finally opens up the IVF debate

By Ian Haworth

February 23, 2024 12:38 pm

 

After Alabama’s Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children and that those who destroy these embryos can be held liable for wrongful death, two of the state’s major providers of in vitro fertilization treatments suspended services while they consider the legal ramifications of what has become the latest controversial and hysteria-inducing chapter in the battle to protect the unborn.

 

“This is part of a long and strategic march towards entrenching this ideology of fetal personhood, that is at the heart of controlling pregnant people, their decisions and their birth outcomes,” Dana Sussman, the deputy executive director of the legal advocacy group Pregnancy Justice, told CNN.

 

Of course, this has absolutely nothing to do with controlling pregnant women, their decisions, or their “birth outcomes,” whatever that means. However, it has everything to do with the “ideology of fetal personhood,” which is less of a dirty phrase uttered by deranged leftists and more of a statement of moral fact.

 

The foundation of the pro-life position is that life begins at conception. There is no other moment in human development, no matter how hard abortion-rights advocates protest, that can logically stand as the beginning of life. Heartbeat, birth, or the ability to feel pain are all arbitrary lines drawn to explain away the utter horror of abortion, which is nothing other than the deliberate destruction of a human life.

 

Given this fact, embryos are humans. Sure, they look different, and there’s an undeniable physical difference between an embryo sitting in a freezer and a walking, talking adult human, but when judged in terms of moral value, both lives exist on an equal footing.

 

Put simply, they both have unalienable rights, including the “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” expressed in the Declaration of Independence.

 

And while it’s hard to deny the technological wonder that allows parents to conceive biological children, with tens of thousands of babies born every year in the United States using various assisted reproductive technologies, IVF does come with a hidden cost: The vast majority of embryos are never used, and millions have been and will be intentionally destroyed.

 

It’s one thing to fertilize an egg and implant that zygote, with nature still playing some part in the timeline of creation. But it’s another to fertilize multiple eggs with the understanding that very few will get the chance even to roll the dice.

 

Whether you like it or not, the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision uncovers the crux of the matter surrounding life. If children born through IVF treatment are no more or less human than children born through natural conception, then why doesn’t this apply to these children prior to birth?

 

Regardless of whether the embryo is sitting in a frozen test tube or a womb, its personhood remains unquestionable.

 

And while judicial decisions should obviously not stand in the way of parents reproducing, preventing humans from being discarded like last night’s unused leftovers would be a good step in the right direction.