Culture and Social Issues

Supreme Court Refuses To Take Up Alabama Ruling Classifying Frozen Embryos As ‘Children’

Flickr/Tony Webster

The Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear a case brought by two Alabama in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics challenging a court ruling that found frozen embryos are considered “children.”

Three Alabama couples filed a lawsuit in 2021 against Center for Reproductive Medicine, Mobile Infirmary Medical Center and a state fertility center after a hospital patient allegedly destroyed their embryos on accident after dropping them on the floor. Alabama’s Supreme Court ruled in February that the state had to consider frozen embryos as “children,” noting that the couples could sue for wrongful death.

The Center for Reproductive Medicine and Mobile Infirmary filed a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court on Aug. 1, askingfor the decision to be reviewed. However, the Supreme Court declined.

A county circuit court judge initially dismissed the case in 2022 after attorneys for the defendants argued that the couples could not sue for “wrongful death” because state law only covered embryos inside the mother’s womb. The Alabama Supreme Court, however, argued that the “Wrongful Death of a Minor Act” applies to all unborn children, no matter the circumstance.

Republican Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed a bill in March allowing those providing IVF treatments to be immune from criminal prosecution.