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Alabama Court Rules Frozen Embryos Made by IVF Are "Children"

15 points by mikece 3y ago

barryrandall 3y ago
Under what circumstances is it legal to freeze a child in Alabama? More importantly, why?
- acdha 3y ago
  Is it specifically not legal? What’s illegal is _harming_ a child, but that doesn’t mean a non-harmful process would be illegal if someone suddenly developed, say, a way to safely freeze someone with an incurable disease or in a hypothetical emergency scenario where you needed more time to treat them. That might seem pedantic but it’s a key distinction because IVF doesn’t involve freezing embryos because the manufacturers of medical freezers need the money but for medically-necessary purposes. Retrieving things like eggs and sperm is difficult and like any medical procedure involves risk to the parent; freezing allows those risks to be taken only once for multiple attempts. Freezing also allows screening for genetic and structural defects and, of course, it avoids endangering the mother and children trying to do everything all at once – the risks go up significantly starting from twins. So restating your question: would it be legal to freeze a child in Alabama to protect them from harm if we had a way to do that which is as safe as IVF? Of course, just as we recognize the difference between “cutting a child with a knife” and “saving their life with a surgical procedure”.
quantified 3y ago
So if a couple creates N fertilized eggs, what is their legal jeopardy for not having all N eventually implanted? Can rhe state criminally or civilly charge them if abandoned? Suppose the intended mother becomes unable to carry, for example due to something incontrovertable like a hysterectomy? Will she be prosecuted for child abandonment or homicide? Don't do IVF in Alabama, I guess. Although when enough scripture is cited in the judgement, the ruling might become more easily overturned.
- QuercusMax 3y ago
  What effects does this have on inheritance, child support, etc? If someone burns down the facility that holds frozen embryos, will they be charged with mass murder? If there's a natural disaster, will they be counted among the dead? The whole thing makes no sense and clearly nobody thought about any of the consequences of such a ruling.
  - sillywalk 3y ago
    This sounds insane. FTA: "The court’s decision specifically permits three couples whose frozen embryos were accidentally destroyed in a Mobile, Alabama, reproductive clinic to sue the facility for wrongful death."
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- sph87 3y ago
  It was a very narrow ruling regarding civil liability for wrongful death as it applies to the word “children”. Some insurance companies tried to say that these families had no financial recourse from embryos being destroyed because a certain law did not apply since they were not children. They explicitly state that this does not confer criminal liability due to different wording in the law. It also states that this does not negate waiver, estoppel or affirmative defenses. It also upholds the dismissal of the case due to lack of wantonness or negligence on the part of the defendants. This is the media blowing something up for click bait. To answer your questions in order: None. No. No.
  - matthewdgreen 3y ago
    It seems like the specific case here is narrow, but the implications are quite broad. The case applies a broad 2018 "sanctity of life" Constitutional amendment to a specific question around IVF clinic liability, and finds that this amendment makes the clinics liable. It's very hard to believe this ruling won't have very serious implications for the IVF industry in Alabama, at a minimum. And when you've got State Supreme Court judges writing things like "It is as if the People of Alabama took what was spoken of the prophet Jeremiah and applied it to every unborn person in this state: ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, Before you were born I sanctified you.’ Jeremiah 1:5,” there's every reason to believe that further exciting rulings could be expected from that court.
amanaplanacanal 3y ago
The problem here is not with the court ruling, it's with the law. If life begins at conception, this is what you get.
falcor84 3y ago
I wonder whether there's any potential interplay between this and the fact that Alabama doesn't seem to have any regulations against cloning human embryos[0,1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_cloning#Current_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_cloning#Current_law [1] https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/appendix-state-laws-on-human-cloning https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/appendix-state-l...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pyuser583 3y ago
A facility messed up and a bunch of embryos were destroyed. Now the potential parents can sue. That doesn’t sound bad. Embryos shouldn’t be treated like bags of salt. More like pets, I suppose. If faciiities can’t avoid negligence they shouldn’t operate.
- acdha 3y ago
  Valuable property, sure, but there are a ton of negative outcomes to treating one Christian schism’s biblical fanfic as law: IVF almost always ends up creating multiple embryos. If one fails to implant or develop, if it’s a child that means the same kind of legal procedure you’d need for an actual dead child - which is pure cruelty to a prospective parent who has already had something they very much wanted to work fail. If it’s a child, you’re apparently obligated to pay to store those embryos forever to avoid murder charges - perhaps you even need to endow a trust or the state needs to accept them into the foster system if you die? What are the odds that someone will even argue that you should be compelled to try using them even if the mother doesn’t want to, her health or finances aren’t good, etc.? Like all pregnancies, IVF also has failure modes which end up needing an abortion to protect the mother’s health and fertility, and the people trying it are more likely to have problems (older, predispositions, etc. - that’s why they’re seeking treatment!) so it’s an amplified version of the normal risks where you would be paying a lot for the opportunity to have armed state security agents force you to take significant health risks. That’s guaranteed to kill people.

15 points by mikece 3y ago

barryrandall 3y ago

Under what circumstances is it legal to freeze a child in Alabama? More importantly, why?

acdha 3y ago
Is it specifically not legal? What’s illegal is _harming_ a child, but that doesn’t mean a non-harmful process would be illegal if someone suddenly developed, say, a way to safely freeze someone with an incurable disease or in a hypothetical emergency scenario where you needed more time to treat them. That might seem pedantic but it’s a key distinction because IVF doesn’t involve freezing embryos because the manufacturers of medical freezers need the money but for medically-necessary purposes. Retrieving things like eggs and sperm is difficult and like any medical procedure involves risk to the parent; freezing allows those risks to be taken only once for multiple attempts. Freezing also allows screening for genetic and structural defects and, of course, it avoids endangering the mother and children trying to do everything all at once – the risks go up significantly starting from twins. So restating your question: would it be legal to freeze a child in Alabama to protect them from harm if we had a way to do that which is as safe as IVF? Of course, just as we recognize the difference between “cutting a child with a knife” and “saving their life with a surgical procedure”.

quantified 3y ago

So if a couple creates N fertilized eggs, what is their legal jeopardy for not having all N eventually implanted? Can rhe state criminally or civilly charge them if abandoned? Suppose the intended mother becomes unable to carry, for example due to something incontrovertable like a hysterectomy? Will she be prosecuted for child abandonment or homicide? Don't do IVF in Alabama, I guess. Although when enough scripture is cited in the judgement, the ruling might become more easily overturned.

QuercusMax 3y ago
What effects does this have on inheritance, child support, etc? If someone burns down the facility that holds frozen embryos, will they be charged with mass murder? If there's a natural disaster, will they be counted among the dead? The whole thing makes no sense and clearly nobody thought about any of the consequences of such a ruling.
- sillywalk 3y ago
  This sounds insane. FTA: "The court’s decision specifically permits three couples whose frozen embryos were accidentally destroyed in a Mobile, Alabama, reproductive clinic to sue the facility for wrongful death."
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
sph87 3y ago
It was a very narrow ruling regarding civil liability for wrongful death as it applies to the word “children”. Some insurance companies tried to say that these families had no financial recourse from embryos being destroyed because a certain law did not apply since they were not children. They explicitly state that this does not confer criminal liability due to different wording in the law. It also states that this does not negate waiver, estoppel or affirmative defenses. It also upholds the dismissal of the case due to lack of wantonness or negligence on the part of the defendants. This is the media blowing something up for click bait. To answer your questions in order: None. No. No.
- matthewdgreen 3y ago
  It seems like the specific case here is narrow, but the implications are quite broad. The case applies a broad 2018 "sanctity of life" Constitutional amendment to a specific question around IVF clinic liability, and finds that this amendment makes the clinics liable. It's very hard to believe this ruling won't have very serious implications for the IVF industry in Alabama, at a minimum. And when you've got State Supreme Court judges writing things like "It is as if the People of Alabama took what was spoken of the prophet Jeremiah and applied it to every unborn person in this state: ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, Before you were born I sanctified you.’ Jeremiah 1:5,” there's every reason to believe that further exciting rulings could be expected from that court.

amanaplanacanal 3y ago

The problem here is not with the court ruling, it's with the law. If life begins at conception, this is what you get.

falcor84 3y ago

I wonder whether there's any potential interplay between this and the fact that Alabama doesn't seem to have any regulations against cloning human embryos[0,1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_cloning#Current_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_cloning#Current_law [1] https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/appendix-state-laws-on-human-cloning https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/appendix-state-l...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

pyuser583 3y ago

A facility messed up and a bunch of embryos were destroyed. Now the potential parents can sue. That doesn’t sound bad. Embryos shouldn’t be treated like bags of salt. More like pets, I suppose. If faciiities can’t avoid negligence they shouldn’t operate.

acdha 3y ago
Valuable property, sure, but there are a ton of negative outcomes to treating one Christian schism’s biblical fanfic as law: IVF almost always ends up creating multiple embryos. If one fails to implant or develop, if it’s a child that means the same kind of legal procedure you’d need for an actual dead child - which is pure cruelty to a prospective parent who has already had something they very much wanted to work fail. If it’s a child, you’re apparently obligated to pay to store those embryos forever to avoid murder charges - perhaps you even need to endow a trust or the state needs to accept them into the foster system if you die? What are the odds that someone will even argue that you should be compelled to try using them even if the mother doesn’t want to, her health or finances aren’t good, etc.? Like all pregnancies, IVF also has failure modes which end up needing an abortion to protect the mother’s health and fertility, and the people trying it are more likely to have problems (older, predispositions, etc. - that’s why they’re seeking treatment!) so it’s an amplified version of the normal risks where you would be paying a lot for the opportunity to have armed state security agents force you to take significant health risks. That’s guaranteed to kill people.