Alabama’s Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children, with the right to life. This case came to the court after some embryros were accidentally broken/;

The Alabama case focused on whether a patient who mistakenly dropped and destroyed other couples’ frozen embryos could be held liable in a wrongful-death lawsuit. The court ruled the patient could, writing that it had long held that “unborn children are ‘children’” and that that was also true for frozen embryos, affording the fertilized eggs the same protection as babies under the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.

This post isn’t an essay, but here are some initial thoughts:

1. This is consistent with the belief that life begins at conception. You don’t have to like the decision, or even many in the pro-life movement, but it is a consistent belief.
   
2. It isn’t new. While I’m sure this is a new viewpoint to many, there are already embryro donation centers, where couples can donate embryos created with IVF but not “use.” Other couples can “adopt” these embryros. My wife and I financially support The National Embryo Donation Center, a non-profit in Knoxville that handles embryro donations and adoption.
   

Cynically, I view anything in the pro/anti-abortion arena as part of the cultural wars, issues meant to further someone’s power, not about the issue itself. This isn’t to say that there are no true believers on the pro-life side, but most of the news seems to be about life/abortion as a wedge issue.

But the poltiical implications here are not clear to me: leftover embryros from IVF is a super niche issues, even in the pro-life crowd. Personally, I identify as pro-life but not with the pro-life movement (more on that someday). It doesn’t seem like a political win for any side, and probably only a minor loss for the pro-abortion side. The case advances legal and intellectual arguments, but assigning the status of children to (frozen) embryos doesn’t directly affect abortion, or the right to choose.

There is a lot more that could be discussed about the case (is accidental death an appropriate charge? Is it OK for the chief justice to use theology in his opinion? Will it affect IVF more broadly?) but that is all beyond the scope of today’s post.