What the Alabama IVF Ruling Says About the Right to Life [in vitro fertilization]

A ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court has been the cause of immense hyperventilating in the mainstream press—and the predictable invocation of scare terms like “theocracy” and “Christian nationalism.”

In LePage v. Center for Reproductive Medicine, P.C., a fertility clinic that neglected to properly secure its frozen embryo nursery from a prying patient was found in breach of Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, after several embryos were killed.

The parents of the dead embryos were within their rights to sue the clinic, the court found.

In penning the majority opinion, Justice Jay Mitchell explained that the state’s highest court had consistently viewed an unborn child as a “minor” under the statute, regardless of his or her stage of development.

As lawyer and commentator Josh Hammer has pointed out, “Crucially, neither the plaintiffs nor defendants contested this understanding, and the question was not before the court.”
So, why does this case matter? What does it have to do with one of the most fundamental rights—the right to life?

At issue, writes Hammer, was “whether the court should legislate from the bench and decree that which the Alabama legislature had opted not to do itself”—namely, to remove longstanding legal protections from certain unborn lives simply because they happen to be located outside of a womb.

“The court, appropriately, declined to do so,” Hammer summarizes. “That’s it. That’s the whole case.”

What really drew the ire of America’s media overlords, however, was the concurring opinion of Chief Justice Tom Parker, who appealed to Christian teachings to buttress Alabama’s commitment to the sanctity of life. He argued that the word “sanctity” has little meaning outside of a Judeo-Christian context: "In summary, the theologically based view of the sanctity of life adopted by the People of Alabama encompasses the following: (1) God made every person in His image; (2) each person therefore has a value that far exceeds the ability of human beings to calculate; and (3) human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself.”

In summary, the theologically based view of the sanctity of life adopted by the People of Alabama encompasses the following: (1) God made every person in His image; (2) each person therefore has a value that far exceeds the ability of human beings to calculate; and (3) human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself.

https://intellectualtakeout.org/2024/02/alabama-ivf-ruling-right-to-life/