The facts are bizarre. A patient wandered into a room at an Alabama fertility clinic where frozen embryos were being stored, grabbed a few, then dropped them onto the floor when the intense cold burned her hand, destroying them. The couples to whom those embryos belonged sued the clinic under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. The question for the court: Were the embryos “minors” within the meaning of that statute?
The answer: Yes indeed. “Extrauterine children” are children. A provision in the Alabama Constitution makes clear that “it is the public policy of this state to recognize and support the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children, including the right to life.” That was enough for the court to err on the side of assuming personhood in the embryos, with the chief justice going so far as to say in his concurrence that “life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God.”
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It sounds like something to get overturned. I do know that a fertilized egg contains the genetic material to potentially develop into a human. Lots of times, either the egg or sperm is defective, and something goes awry and development into a human child does not occur. I am still trying to settle on an answer myself. I think I can accept that 5 5 or 6 day old fertilized egg in a test tube is not a person. I am pretty firm in my believe that once a fertilized egg implants and latches on to the mother for protection, it is the mother’s responsibility to nurture it as well as she can. I do not believe a woman should take steps to avoid an actual pregnancy, but I am thinking that a fertilized egg is not a human any more tha a sperm or egg is. I do think IVF raises a lot of questions, and maybe it should never have been developed, and things left in God’s hands. This is from my own experience of years of wanting a baby, but IVF was not an option. IVF does not always work. Are the “embryos” that are created, inserted into the mother, but don’t “take” any less an “accidental death” than the ones that were dropped while still frozen? I do see IVF it as “playing God”, but God obviously allowed the technology.
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