IVF, the Alabama Supreme Court, and Catholic doctrine

You may have heard of a recent case out of Alabama's Supreme Court that has impacts on in vitro fertilization (IVF) (LePage v Centers for reproductive medicine). One of the most interesting facts is that the parties - both the parents and the IVF clinic and hospital - agree that life begins at fertilization.

The fact that the defendants (clinic and hospitals) agreed with the plaintiffs (parents) that the embryos were alive and then died is under-reported in the media, which chose to focus on the court’s categorization of the humans as children. To be fair to the media, that is what the court decided, because that was the only thing in dispute. But still, that particular agreement seems newsworthy.

Some background may be helpful.

The facts of the case are that four couples paid an IVF clinic to harvest the sperm and eggs from the man and woman, join them, grow these nascent lives to a certain stage, then freeze them to stop their growth, awaiting a later time to implant these living humans into the woman’s womb. The clinic contracted with a hospital to store the tiny frozen human beings until the time for implantation came.

Unfortunately, the hospital didn’t have great security. A patient got into the storage area, picked up a tray holing these tiny humans, and dropped it after feeling how cold the tray was. These tiny unborn humans died. The parents sued the clinic and hospital under a “wrongful death of a minor” act. The parties disagreed on one specific point: whether the frozen lives were children in Alabama law. The trial court and the court of appeals both decided that these tiny, living human beings weren’t children.

The Supreme Court of Alabama documented what the parties did agree on, and it’s worth paying attention to:

“All parties to these cases, like all members of this court, agree that an unborn child is a genetically unique human being whose life begins at fertilization and ends with death. The parties further agree that an unborn child usually qualifies as ‘human life,’ ‘human being,’ or ‘person,’ as those words are used in ordinary conversation and in the text of Alabama’s wrongful death statutes. That is true, as everyone acknowledges, throughout all stages of an unborn child’s development, regardless of viability.” Slip op at 8.

Holy cow. The court and the parties agreed that the cryptopreserved in vitro embryos were living human beings…and they made this determination based on science, not faith.

If something can grow via cellular reproduction, consumes nutrients, excretes waste, and has the potential for independent movement, we can scientifically say it’s alive. If something has a unique genetic code that has the potential to grow into a fully mature adult of its species, we can say scientifically that it’s a complete organism. If that genetic code is human and comes from human parents, then the living organism is human. Everyone on this case agrees with those fundamental scientific concepts.

That is truly wonderful news, and I wish it would have gotten more publicity. Now, the only difference of opinion is how much protection that human life…however small…deserves. And that’s a great discussion to have: since scientifically life begins at conception and ends at death, morally what protection is due to each life? As Catholics, we know that every human life is equally valuable; how I wish the world would life up to that ideal.

I encourage you to read the 25- page opinion itself here: https://publicportal-api.alappeals.gov/courts/68f021c4-6a44-4735-9a76-5360b2e8af13/cms/case/343D203A-B13D-463A-8176-C46E3AE4F695/docketentrydocuments/E3D95592-3CBE-4384-AFA6-063D4595AA1D