The Alabama Court Ruling and the Future of IVF

One of the more consequential rulings of the past century quietly took place in a state court recently, and it could potentially make overturning Roe v. Wade look like child’s play.

The Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos conceived by the in-vitro fertilization (IVF) process are human children – with human rights, the greatest of which is the right to life.

The ruling came on the heels of three couples suing a Mobile Alabama fertility clinic and hospital for wrongful death, after their frozen embryos had been tragically dropped and consequently killed.

A Mobile County circuit court judge in 2022 dismissed that case, opining that the Alabama law protecting unborn children does not include those living outside of the womb. Last month the state’s supreme court reversed this ruling.

Alabama Supreme Court Justice Jay Mitchell wrote regarding the 8-1 ruling:

“[T]he Wrongful Death of a Minor Act is sweeping and unqualified. It applies to all children, born and unborn, without limitation. …[T]he People of this State have adopted a Constitutional amendment directly aimed at stopping courts from excluding ‘unborn life’ from legal protection.”

Looking down the road, this ruling may lead to two blockbuster possibilities, one short term and the other long term. In the short term, it could spell the end of in-vitro fertilization in Alabama. In the IVF process, an average of 10-15 human embryos are created in a petri dish in the attempt that one survives the process until birth. The fate of these embryonic children are three-fold: they're deliberately killed for being deemed imperfect, die after being mechanically transferred into a woman’s womb, are deliberately killed if too many survive embryo transfer, or are frozen indefinitely in a cryogenic lab. Killing and all these human beings is an unspeakable attack against human dignity.

Secondly, and longer term, this ruling could eventually reach the U.S Supreme Court. If the high court ever decides to hear the case, it could do one of two things: judge narrowly the merits of the Alabama law solely for the state of Alabama; or, if a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court justices find Alabama’s legal recognition of embryos as persons to be consistent with the fifth or fourteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution, then abortion, in-vitro fertilization, and most hormonal so-called contraceptives (which also act as abortifacients) would be prohibited. At best, this would effectively reverse the sexual revolution, and the long national nightmare plaguing the American family, women and preborn children would come to an end.

It may also cause a civil war, as did freeing the slaves – which was the last time the nation had to disabuse itself of deeming a segment of the population as “less than fully human.”

With hope and prayer, a legal end of our culture of death would not result in more violence. Nevertheless, when the proverbial smoke clears, the logic could eventually reverse the trifold tragedy of modern times: the sexual revolution, which caused a culture of death, which led to the current era of insanity. That would be a miracle of grace.

Interestingly, this would make the perfect sequel to my recently published book “The Devil-ution of Society: from a civilization of life, to a culture of death, to an age of insanity.” Check it out at Amazon.com.