Last week, Alabama prolonged protections beyond the unborn within the womb to the unborn outside it, becoming the primary state to rule that frozen embryos are children under the law.
The decision has elicited praise from some evangelicals who, believing life begins at conception, need to see these “snowflake babies” treated as people relatively than as commodities.
It’s also complicated the long run of in vitro fertilization (IVF) across the state, upsetting parents and prospective parents who’ve turned to the procedure. At least one hospital system has halted IVF treatments for now.
After Roe v. Wade was overturned, parts of the pro-life movement evoked the 14th Amendment, which bars depriving “any person of life, liberty, or property,” and rallied around fetal personhood laws to ban abortion and grant human rights at conception.
The move to guard embryos was anticipated by each anti-abortion and reproductive rights activists. It follows a pattern of pro-life policies within the Southern state: Alabama’s structure protects “the rights of the unborn child,” and the state’s abortion ban went into effect after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in 2022.
In a case brought by the parents of several embryos destroyed at a fertility clinic, the Alabama Supreme Court affirmed on Friday that unborn children fall under its Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, no matter “developmental stage, physical location, or some other ancillary characteristics,” that’s, even in the event that they are stored in a freezer and haven’t yet been implanted.
An estimated 1.5 million embryos are on ice within the US, and fertility treatments like IVF have gotten more common. Last 12 months, 42 percent of Americans—and 44 percent of white evangelicals—said they or someone they knew had sought fertility assistance, up from 33 percent in 2018, in response to the Pew Research Center.
The ruling doesn’t ban IVF, but for the reason that procedure often ends in leftover embryos which might be kept indefinitely on ice or destroyed, fertility clinics aren’t sure what the implications will likely be for them and their storage.
“Why is it that every one of the fertility doctors in red states were freaking out after Dobbs?” Katy Faust, founding father of the nonprofit Them Before Us, previously told CT. “It’s because they [may not be able] to do business there in the event that they can’t destroy human life.”
The issue of excess embryos from IVF and the ethics of the method itself have turn into an even bigger a part of the pro-life conversation amongst evangelicals, including advocacy for embryo adoption.
Justice Jay Mitchell—who attends the Church of the Highlands, a multisite megachurch—wrote the majority opinion within the embryo ruling. He focused on the understanding of the word child and didn’t mention God.
“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,” the ruling said.
“It is just not the role of this Court to craft a recent limitation based on our own view of what’s or is just not smart public policy. That is particularly true where, as here, the People of this State have adopted a Constitutional amendment directly aimed toward stopping courts from excluding ‘unborn life’ from legal protection.”
A concurring opinion from Chief Justice Tom Parker, though, relies on a biblical understanding of personhood and references Genesis, the apostle Paul, Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, and John Calvin. Parker—a member of Frazer Church, a Free Methodist congregation in Montgomery—concluded:
The theologically based view of the sanctity of life adopted by the People of Alabama encompasses the next: (1) God made all and sundry in His image; (2) all and sundry subsequently has a worth that far exceeds the power of human beings to calculate; and (3) human life can’t be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself.
Andrew Walker, ethics and public theology professor at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, called the ruling “a shocking development stuffed with moral significance.”
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, who got pregnant together with her son through intrauterine insemination (IUI), has referenced her fertility struggles on the campaign trail and agreed that embryos “are babies” on NBC News on Wednesday.
“One thing is to save lots of sperm or to save lots of eggs, but whenever you discuss an embryo, you might be talking about—to me, that’s a life,” said Haley, whose IUI didn’t require the creation of embryos outside the body.
Haley, a Methodist who describes herself as pro-life, has emphasized the necessity for consensus on the federal level in relation to abortion and sees more opportunities on the state level.
“When you see more women who’re having trouble getting pregnant, and also you see more women doing artificial and in vitro, those are conversations that we want to have,” she said. “But it’s also conversations where we want to have women and doctors involved within the conversation to say, ‘How do we would like to handle this going forward?’”
Even before the Alabama decision, Dobbs had made it harder for IVF couples to donate embryos they opted to not implant to researchers. The Washington Post reported that Stanford University’s RENEW Biobank went from accepting embryos from 49 states to simply 7—the remaining require extra review in case donors violate their home state’s laws.
Catholics have historically carried more theological concerns around assisted reproduction than Protestants, though more within the pro-life movement are being attentive to the difficulty. Evangelical parents who desire children but struggle with infertility may opt to do IVF but limit the variety of embryos created in order that each could be implanted.
Despite some reservations, theologian Wayne Grudem wrote in 2019 for The Gospel Coalition that “if IVF is utilized by a married couple, and if care is taken to forestall the intentional destruction of embryos, then it’s a morally good motion that pleases God since it violates no scriptural guidelines, achieves the moral good of overcoming infertility, and brings the blessing of kids to yet one more family.”
Jennifer Lahl, president of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, has raised concerns for years about assisted reproduction. After Alabama’s decision, she pointed to Germany’s ban on freezing embryos, which has been in place since 1990.
“IVF continues to be legal, and the sky has not fallen,” she said. “You just can’t make loads and freeze them, you need to implant them.”
