“Frozen embryos are children.” That's the heart of the ruling released yesterday by the Alabama Supreme Court, which allows two wrongful death lawsuits against a fertility clinic to proceed. The decision immediately sparked outcry in the United States, with reproductive rights supporters fearing it would endanger in vitro fertilization and affect the hundreds of thousands of people who use it. The Alabama court case took place in 2021 after a patient entered a clinic and mistakenly caused damage to the frozen embryos of several other couples. According to the prosecution, “the subzero temperature at which the embryos were stored burned the patient's hand, causing the embryos to fall to the ground, killing them.” Hence the decision of some couples to take the man to court. The clinic defended itself by saying that Alabama's wrongful death law did not apply to embryos located outside the uterus. The relevant county judge dismissed the case, but the state Supreme Court overruled that decision. The rule “applies in fact to all children, born and unborn, without any limitation”, declared the magistrates of the Court.
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