The Patriot Post® · Good News: Fertilized Embryos Are Human Lives, Says Alabama
In vitro fertilization is a sensitive subject. It is hotly disputed even amongst conservatives. One the one hand, many believe it is an excellent way to help struggling couples conceive a much-desired child. On the other hand, IVF has a very dark side that traffics in the buying and selling of these young souls, particularly through the practice of surrogacy.
This humble publication tends to lean more toward the perspective that IVF, for all its promises to help families that are struggling with infertility, is a practice that has more cons than pros. This is particularly true when one considers that fertility doctors often extract and fertilize a plethora of eggs, but couples only use the “most viable” ones, leaving the rest either on ice or to be destroyed. If one believes that life begins at conception/fertilization, then the destruction of these lives is murder.
This is precisely the conclusion that the Alabama Supreme Court came to in a landmark decision. James LePage and Emily LePage, et al v. The Center for Reproductive Medicine was a case in which several parents sued because their frozen embryos (read: babies) were killed due to negligence on the part of the fertility center, which had failed to secure the room where the children were stored. A patient entered that room and removed five of the children from their cryogenic baths, killing the babies instantly.
These parents were seeking punitive damages against The Center for Reproductive Medicine for failing to safeguard the lives of their children stored in the cryogenic nursery. What the Alabama Supreme Court had to determine was if those babies who were killed counted as humans and were thus protected under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act since they were not implanted in a mother’s womb at the time.
The court did not say that one can no longer receive in vitro fertilization or that one cannot freeze fertilized eggs. It said that the fertility clinic should be held responsible for the loss of life under its watch.
The Left, predictably, had a conniption. The New York Times quoted an outraged Dr. Paula Amato, president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, who predicted that “young doctors would stop going to Alabama to train or to practice medicine in the aftermath of the ruling, and that doctors would close fertility clinics in the state if operating them meant running the risk of being brought up on civil or criminal charges.”
Washington Post associate editor Ruth Marcus decried the ruling as ushering in a “theocracy” because the court called the little babies created in the image of God. She then quoted the Constitution: “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Here, one must point out the obvious: Many of the Founders were Christian. This clause only applies to establishing state religions — i.e., you can’t make Catholicism the official religion. What the Alabama Court did was use the morality of the Bible by which our Constitution was guided and upon which our country was founded. Oh, and then there’s the science.
These ghouls missed some important facts in the ruling: “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 at death. The parties further agree that an unborn child usually qualifies as a ‘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.” That means both the grieving parents and the fertility clinic agree these frozen babies are human lives. The disagreement was over whether or not these children were protected under existing Alabama law.
The rights of these children and the rights of these parents are being ignored by the howling scribblers in the Leftmedia. Children were killed because this fertility clinic didn’t secure the door and safeguard their lives. Now, their parents can pursue justice. Even more importantly, this ruling gives these children their rightful status: That of human beings whose lives (even though they may be short) have value.