Alabama: Embryos are People

This week, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos (like those used for fertility treatments) should be considered children. I’ll look at the Chief Justice’s religious interpretation (and why that’s incorrect) as well as the consequences for IVF.

 

The Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court wrote this: ‘Even before birth, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.’

Now, the judiciary interprets the law. So how can someone interpret a law religiously if that law isn’t religious? If a law doesn’t contain religion, its interpretation shouldn’t, either.

But the US Constitution is specifically an areligious, purely secular, document. It actively removes religion from the law-making (Congress), enforcing (President) and interpreting (judiciary) bodies of government. For anyone in any position of any level of government to make a decision based on religion directly opposes the Constitution. Hence it shouldn’t be done.

Let’s not forget that conservatives claim they interpret the Constitution as the Founders intended (originalism). They decry liberals for interpreting the Constitution to apply it to the modern world (a living document). Therefore, surely conservatives should be extra-enthusiastic about not putting God into a secular document?

 

If embryos should be considered children, they have full personhood.

Hence anyone who harms an embryo can be held liable for murdering a child under the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.  Considering the IVF process destroys most frozen embryos, the state’s largest hospital isn’t doing IVF treatments in order to protect its staff from possible prosecution.

(Yet they’re still going to harvest eggs. But why bother if they can’t fertilise and thus use them? I would say this is a waste of money, but considering how expensive American healthcare is, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ll continue to harvest the essentially useless eggs solely to make a profit.)

 

Not every IVF embryo can be used, meaning these ones are destroyed.

So a law prohibiting this essentially prohibits IVF. Unless the hospitals/centres fertilise one person’s batch of eggs and use this up on all their patients before fertilising new eggs.

This would mean people’s IVF babies would most likely not be their own genetic material. If people didn’t mind having non-genetically related offspring, there would be far more adoption.

 

Finally, it appears odd. Usually conservative groups want to increase the number of babies born, yet they’re attacking IVF, a baby-making institution. The reason why this is happening is a conservative reason (all unborn people have rights). Hence ‘appears odd’.

 

So, a religious interpretation of a law goes against the Constitution itself and it causes much uncertainty to the IVF sector. What an unnecessary mess.