[matthewdgreen]

It seems like the specific case here is narrow, but the implications are quite broad. The case applies a broad 2018 "sanctity of life" Constitutional amendment to a specific question around IVF clinic liability, and finds that this amendment makes the clinics liable. It's very hard to believe this ruling won't have very serious implications for the IVF industry in Alabama, at a minimum.

And when you've got State Supreme Court judges writing things like "It is as if the People of Alabama took what was spoken of the prophet Jeremiah and applied it to every unborn person in this state: ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, Before you were born I sanctified you.’ Jeremiah 1:5,” there's every reason to believe that further exciting rulings could be expected from that court.

[sph87]

Negative. The court actually upholds the lower courts dismissal of the case.

It simply holds that the word “children” in a law written in the 1800s includes the unborn. That is that an insurance company can’t argue that because this thing wasn’t born, it’s not a child, and they are immune from liability.

They cite partial birth mishap as one reason for that. Like if a doctor accidentally decapites a child during delivery, their insurance would still be liable. Or if a pregnant woman is murdered, the killer could be held financially liable for both. Had they ruled the other way, that would not be the case.

The criminal statute had been updated in 2008 with different wording to clarify this matter.

Again, very very narrow ruling. Experts in a field made a nuanced decision that the media is hyping for views.

[sterlind]

Considering an assembly of ~10 cells an "unborn child," to the point of allowing wrongful death suits, seems quite extreme to me. That's a far cry from accidentally decapitating a baby during delivery.

Also, embryos are so early that the very mechanics of life are different. Embryos last decades in cold storage, good luck trying that with a fetus. They're not in a womb. They're not on a path to becoming babies until they're successfully implanted. These "experts" are straining the law far beyond any possible plain meaning or original intent.

[sph87]

Yeah man, I don’t disagree with any of that. But that is not what the ruling is about. The law, as it is written, only says “children”. This was a law written in the 1800s. It does not consider any of that.

The defense said, “hey you should throw this out because that thing isn’t a child, it hasn’t been born yet. Also, even if it was a child, they signed waivers and accidents happen.” The court said, “you can’t just say this doesn’t count because it hasn’t been born yet, but your right about the other stuff. Case dismissed.”

They did not rule on the number of cells that constitutes a child because that was not the argument. Here is the pseudocode:

Defense: If(!born) then child = false

Judge: Error

Media: mind blown

You: ‘If(cells <= 10) then child = false’ works on my machine

Me: That’s not what caused the error

[acdha]

> Yeah man, I don’t disagree with any of that. But that is not what the ruling is about. The law, as it is written, only says “children”. This was a law written in the 1800s. It does not consider any of that.

A law in the 1800s did not consider embryos children. They did not have funerals for every miscarriage, most people didn’t name children until after birth, and in the early 1800s abortion was a not uncommon practice and even advertised.

I think it’s also worth noting that when that started to change it was racist and focused on babies, still having no concept of an embryo as a human, as white people got concerned that immigrants and former slaves would outbreed them:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/the-compl...

Alabama was early to criminalize but the laws reflected the understanding of the time–functional but not scientific–and banned inducing a miscarriage because they understood how pregnancy worked but didn’t treat it as murder, following biblical precedent. The total ban is a historical precedent going all the way back to 2019: https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/2022/06/24/a...

[LeafItAlone]

https://www.al.com/news/mobile/2021/11/frozen-embryos-not-pe...

The defense was arguing that frozen non-implanted embryos are not “children”, not just unborn.

[sph87]

From the ruling:

The parties to these cases have raised many difficult questions, including ones about the ethical status of extrauterine children, the application of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution to such children, and the public-policy implications of treating extrauterine children as human beings. But the Court today need not address these questions because, as explained below, the relevant statutory text is clear: the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act applies on its face to all unborn children, without limitation.

Under the defendants' test, even a full-term infant conceived through IVF and gestated to term would not qualify as a "child" or "person," because such a child would be "unborn" (having never been delivered from a biological womb).

Unborn children are "children" under the Act, without exception based on developmental stage, physical location, or any other ancillary characteristics. 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.

As I have stated above this is a very narrow ruling. About born or unborn. And what’s more it doesn’t even rule in favor of the families. It upholds the dismissal of the case on other grounds.

You are all trying to apply this to cases that they explicitly side stepped! The ONLY questioned answered by the court is: Does this law apply to unborn children? Nothing more.

[matthewdgreen]

It's very strange because I read the "Wrongful Death of a Minor" statute and it says nothing about born vs. unborn children, unless it was recently amended. If I'm reading you correctly, you're saying that the Court previously interpreted that "black letter statute" wording to include unborn children (even if the actual wording of the statute does not) and in this case they're merely taking the "relatively uncontroversial" step of expanding their novel interpretation of the statute so that it also includes IVF embryos. Even though the statute discusses neither.

The dissenting justice seems to confirm my impression: "Justice Greg Cook, who filed the only full dissent to the majority opinion, said the 1872 law did not define "minor child" and was being stretched from the original intent to cover frozen embryos."

So the court has now made two rulings that vastly expand the scope of the "minor child" that is mentioned in the "black letter statute". This is obviously fraught with ethical implications and implications for future cases. But since the court asserted that this is simply applying "statute" and there are "no major ethical implications", I guess we just have to accept their assertion? That seems foolish.

[LeafItAlone]

> The ONLY questioned answered by the court is: Does this law apply to unborn children?

No.

The very beginning of the opinion:

> This Court has long held that unborn children are "children" for purposes of Alabama's Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, § 6-5-391, Ala. Code 1975, a statute that allows parents of a deceased child to recover punitive damages for their child's death. The central question presented in these consolidated appeals, which involve the death of embryos kept in a cryogenic nursery, is whether the Act contains an unwritten exception to that rule for extrauterine children -- that is, unborn children who are located outside of a biological uterus at the time they are killed. Under existing black-letter law, the answer to that question is no: the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location.

[LeafItAlone]

And here’s the opinion, in case you are still confused:

https://publicportal-api.alappeals.gov/courts/68f021c4-6a44-...

[quantified]

Yes, but the number of cells is somewhat relevant. Any unfertilized egg or misplaced sperm is an important fraction of a child. A single fertilized egg could be viewed as a child.

[sph87]

The court did not rule on that. This specific law only says children. The defense said this case did not apply because these are embryos that had not been born. The court said that’s not a valid argument because the word children includes unborn children.

For you to then say, ohh well these don’t meet the development criteria is a different argument entirely. That was not the test proposed by the defense. Had they said, this does not count because it doesn’t meet a cell count threshold, then that would be something the court did not rule on.