The Alabama Supreme Court’s decision to drop a frozen embryo in a cryogenic storage facility of a pregnant woman in the womb
Mary Ziegler: Absolutely. Three couples have gone to a clinic in Mobile, Alabama, for intaglio fertilization treatment. A hospital patient entered the place where frozen embryos were stored, handling some of them, burned his hand, and dropped the embryos, at a point in 2020. The three couples were involved in the lawsuit. The state’s wrongful death of a minor law might have been one of the reasons for the numerous theories in the suit. The Alabama Supreme Court agreed with their decision on Friday.
“I was not surprised,” said Jill Lens, a professor of law at the University of Arkansas and an expert in reproductive rights. If a person is pregnant and dies, then the Alabama Supreme Court will apply wrongful death law to the second person in the womb. I’m not sure why the location in a freezer would matter.”
The Alabama abortion debate should have been observed by anyone who’s been following it because prosecutors in that state have arrested pregnant women for taking drugs that could hurt a fetus. Alabama outlaws all abortions, making no exceptions for cases of rape or incest.
Mitchell said that “unborn children are ‘children’, without exception, based on their development stage, location, and any other ancillary characteristics.”
What went wrong in this case pertains to the security of the hospital that was storing the frozen embryos. A random patient somehow gained access to the cryogenics lab, grabbed the embryos and dropped them, thus destroying them.
What do the rulings of Alabama’s first supreme court tell us about the fetus or embryo insufficiencies?
Alabama’s Chief Justice, Tom Parker, wrote in the decision that destroying life would “incur the wrath of a holy God.” Of nine state Supreme Court Justices, only one disagreed.
It was a wrongful death lawsuit and it was brought by couples who want to hold someone accountable for the accidental destruction of their embryo. That said, what do you see as the wider-ranging or perhaps unintended consequences for IVF clinics in Alabama?
In All Things Considered, host Ailsa Chang talks to UC Davis Professor of Law Mary Ziegler, who breaks down the legal implication for how insufficiencies are performed.
Chang: If the ruling in this case was very much confined to Alabama state law, as you describe, what are the wider implications of this ruling for people who don’t live in Alabama? What do you see?
They were talking about Ziegler I believe there’s been a broader strategy to fight against abortion. The federal constitution says that the fetus or embryo is a person for all purposes. While this is not an issue of the federal constitution, you will see the anti-abortion movement making a gradual case that more state courts are able to recognize a fetus or embryo as a person for different reasons. Their argument that a fetus is a rights holder, and the fact that some abortion laws are impermissibly, gives them a lot of strength.
Ziegler: Well, if Alabama IVF providers feel obligated to implant every embryo they create, that’s likely to both reduce the chances that any IVF cycle will be successful. It also might make it a lot more expensive. It is very expensive to have fertility treatments. I think it is between $15,000 and $20,000 per cycle. Many people don’t succeed with the procedure after one cycle. If you’re not allowed to create more than one embryo per cycle, it will make IVF more costly for people who don’t have insurance and can’t afford it.
Predictions for a Baby’s First Birth: Implications of the Supreme Court Case against Prohibited Insemination in South Carolina
Biden’s campaign slogan was that he wouldn’t stop until the protections of the abortion law were restored in federal law.
“When you talk about an embryo, you are talking about, to me, that’s a life. “So I can see where that’s coming from,” the former South Carolina governor said.
Haley has in the past discussed her struggles with infertility, and told NBC on Wednesday that she conceived her children through artificial insemination, a process that does not involve creating embryos in a lab.
“So you also want to make sure that the parents are aware of what is expected of them, and that the provider is aware of what’s expected of them as well,” she said.
Alabama Fertility Specialists announced on its Facebook page that it would stop new IVF treatments because of the legal risk to the clinic and embryologists. The Center for Reproductive Medicine in Mobile, which is in the center of the Supreme court case, stopped offering IFV services.
The court’s decision was called a “horrifying signal of what to come across the country” by Barbara Collura of RESOLVE.
Throughout the campaign, Haley has said she is “unapologetically pro-life,” but called on the GOP to show “compassion” and “find consensus” on the issue of abortion.
Democrats, meanwhile, see abortion as a winning issue. The data suggests that women will vote ahead of the midterms in 2022, based on voter registration data. And in every ballot initiative since Dobbs v. Jackson, the Supreme Court case that overturned Roe, the anti-abortion measure lost, even in solidly red states.
People who are suffering every day in our country due to this issue have been seen over the course of a year and almost a half. The former President was going to pick Supreme Court justices who would overturn the rights of women. And he did it. And that’s what got us to this point today.”