The Alabama Supreme Court has ruled that frozen embryos are children subject to protection under state law.
The 8-1 ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed by three in-vitro fertilization (IVF) couples whose embryos were destroyed in 2020. The high court’s ruling, which was released on Friday, reversed a lower court’s ruling that had dismissed the complaint.
The state’s “Wrongful Death of a Minor Act” applies to unborn children, and the justices ruled that the law applies regardless of whether they are in the mother’s body at the time.
The high court wrote in its decision: “The ordinary meaning of ‘child’ includes children who have not yet been born.”
“Here, the text of the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act is sweeping and unqualified. It applies to all children, born and unborn, without limitation. It is not the role of this Court to craft a new limitation based on our own view of what is or is not wise public policy,” Justice Jay Mitchell wrote in the opinion on behalf of the majority.
“That is especially true where, as here, the People of this State have adopted a Constitutional amendment directly aimed at stopping courts from excluding ‘unborn life’ from
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