Alabama High Court Affirms Unborn Embryos Human Persons
When we first objected to the call for the government to subsidize the IVF industry by telling our readers the practice is immoral because it is an affront to the marriage covenant by separating the conjugal act from procreation in defiance of God’s law. The child created outside of the conjugal act is unacceptably reduced to an object rather than a human being who deserves dignity as a person and not a thing.
The other moral objection we raised is IVF fertilizes at least 12 eggs while only using one for the procedure. Sadly, some of those human beings are destroyed in the process, while others are frozen indefinitely or discarded. Simply put, IVF is another form of abortion.
Many do not believe IVF is immoral because they fail to admit some of these embryos are children and not just a blob of cells, which can be viewed as collateral damage for enhanced fertility capabilities. This type of reasoning makes it is difficult to convince a secular world that has placed its hope in science instead of God to admit they are killing children, but the Alabama Supreme Court ruled differently.
After we first published our posts on IVF, no one could have predicted another nationwide story about IVF would hit the headlines weeks later. The remarkable story came from an unprecedented source, the Supreme Court of Alabama. The high court ruled a frozen embryo is indeed a human person with the rights of any person.
The ruling came after a patient in a Mobile hospital entered an unsecured room containing numerous frozen embryos. According to the suit, the unnamed patient took the embryos from their cryogenic nursery, and due to the extremely low temperature the embryos are stored in, the patient was forced to drop them, killing the embryos. The parents whose genetic material created these children sued under the legal theory of wrongful death. The trial court dismissed the case, reasoning the cryopreserved embryos do not fit within the definition of a person or a child.
The Alabama Supreme Court reversed the trial court’s decision by unambiguously stating that ‘extrauterine children,’ or unborn children located outside of a biological uterus at the time they were killed, are indeed children and, thus, covered under Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor law.
The Supreme Court, in this case, surprisingly spoke the truth instead of the twisted and tortured language commonly used to justify the killing of babies. “All parties to these cases, like all members of this Court, agree that an unborn child is a genetically unique human being whose life begins at fertilization and ends at death. The parties further agree that an unborn child usually qualifies as a “human life,” “human being,” or “person,” as those words are used in ordinary conversation and in the text of Alabama’s wrongful-death statutes.”
Predictably, outrage followed the decision with fear-mongering statements that IVF clinics would refuse to continue to practice in the state and couples would be unjustly harmed by not having the opportunity to have children.
Immediately, the Alabama legislature proposed a bill that would successfully nullify the Supreme Court’s decision. Immunity would be granted against any civil or criminal charges against any person or institution in the business of In Vitro Fertilization.
The new legislation has the approval of Republican Kay Ivey. She isn’t the only Republican for the continuing practice of IVF. Many Republicans are distancing themselves from the court’s ruling in fear of losing votes in the upcoming elections.
Republican Representative, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, reacted to the Court’s decision by introducing a pro-IVF resolution in Congress. Her resolution is grandstanding and pandering with little or no legal effect. Even Presidential candidate Donald Trump wrote on the Truth Social platform. “We want to make it easier for mothers and fathers to have babies, not harder! That includes supporting the availability of fertility treatments like IVF in every State of America.”
However, the voices of the prominent Republican voices are shortsighted and opinions without any moral foundations to support their claims. They misunderstand the moral objection by not taking into consideration the fate of those killed and frozen embryos. They are only concerned with the live birth and not the tragedy it takes to get there. In other words, the end justifies any means. Unfortunately, they are not in the minority; a good portion of the public has such undeveloped morals that they can easily forget the killing of human beings if it results in what they want: a child of their own.
Despite the reaction from both sides of the aisle against Alabama’s Supreme Court ruling, there is a good reason for hope. For the first time in recent memory, a secular institution affirmed the truth about life, especially about unborn life. The conceived person inside the uterus or outside is a human person, and the court agrees with the moral position continuously stated by Christianity.
Without religious authority, the court brought the truth about life to the public square, which all had to hear. At the very least, the court’s voice gave an opposite interpretation that a fertilized egg is indeed a human person.
That alone gives renewed energy to those working to protect the most vulnerable.