Pulse
2 September 2024
On 16 February 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court issued a stunning ruling that embryos created through in vitro fertilisation (IVF) are to be considered as children.
The case involved three couples who underwent IVF treatment at a fertility clinic. The treatments were successful, and the women became pregnant and gave birth to healthy babies. As is the usual practice, the excess embryos that were produced in the procedure were frozen and preserved by the fertility clinic (a technique known as cryo-preservation) located in the hospital.
A patient in the hospital entered the fertility clinic and tried to remove some of the frozen embryos from the tank in which they were stored. The patient dropped the embryos, consequently destroying them.
The plaintiff couples brought lawsuits against the fertility clinic and hospital. The lawsuits for negligence and wantonness were dismissed. Another lawsuit was brought against the hospital and clinic which appealed to the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, which is a statute in Alabama. This, too, was dismissed by the trial court.
The couples appealed that decision to the Supreme Court, which ruled that the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act does apply in this case. In its brief, the Supreme Court stated that the Act applies to ‘all unborn children without limitation. And that includes unborn children who are not located in utero at the time they were killed.’
By this ruling, the Alabama Supreme Court has declared that in vitro embryos are children. This stunning ruling has staggering implications because it is estimated that currently there are about 600,000 frozen embryos in storage in America. This means that more than half a million children – people – are being cryo-preserved.
This ruling also has serious ramifications for the practice of IVF itself. According to one report, ‘Several of the state’s IVF clinics have since paused services, and lawmakers, doctors, and patients are raising concerns about the far-ranging impacts of the ruling on health care, including reproductive technology.’
Christians have cause to applaud this ruling because of our belief that a human embryo, at the point of conception, is a human being who bears the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26-27). The human embryo, therefore, at the earliest stage of its development must be accorded value and dignity, and therefore deserves our protection.
This is the position of the Roman Catholic Church, which, with characteristic clarity, argued in Donum Vitae (1987) that the zygote is a human being deserving of the treatment that is given to every human person. Consequently, it condemns the creation and subsequent destruction of embryos for the purpose of research.
In a similar vein, the freezing of embryos is also condemned because of the great risks to which embryos are subjected by this procedure, but also because cryopreservation deprives embryos of maternal shelter and gestation.
Most significantly, the Vatican condemns IVF and the cryopreservation of embryos because it regards this as nothing less than the human desire to ‘play God’. By these procedures, it states, ‘life and death are subjected to the decision of man, who thus sets himself up as the giver of life and death by decree.’
This basic position is rehearsed again in Dignitas Personae (2008), a document published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. While this document is purposed to bring Donum Vitae up to date, its fundamental position that the embryo is from the point of conception a human being whose dignity must not be violated remains unchanged. Thus, Dignitas Personae objects, on both theological and ethical grounds, to a slew of medical procedures and practices including the freezing of embryos.
The Protestant position on IVF and the moral status of the early embryo is – predictably – more diverse. This came into sharp focus in the debate on the moral status of the blastocyst in the context of embryonic stem cell research.
A number of Protestant theologians and ethicists accept the position espoused by the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act of 1990 which allows embryos less than 14 days old to be used for research. This view regards the early embryo simply as human tissue which does not possess the value and dignity of adult human beings.
This position has also led some Protestant theologians and ethicists to consider non-embryo-centric arguments for the creation and use of embryos either for research or for fertility treatment. For example, the Lutheran theologian Ted Peters employed the principle of beneficence, an important metric in biomedical ethics, as justification for using embryos for research.
For Peters, beneficence here is applied to the vast number of people who will benefit from embryonic stem cell research once it yields therapeutic applications for diseases for which there is hitherto no cure. In his utilitarian calculus, the question of how the principle must be applied to the human embryo itself is entirely side-stepped.
More conservative Protestant Christians, however, would profoundly disagree with Peters because of their view on the moral status of the embryo. This view, which is firmly grounded in the teachings of Scripture, is supported by biology.
Writing for the Christian Medical Fellowship, Peter Saunders explains it this way:
Biologically the human embryo is undoubtedly human; it has human chromosomes derived from human gametes. It is also undoubtedly alive – a new active individual human organism from the moment of fertilisation exhibiting respiration, growth, reproduction, excretion and nutrition. Human development is a continuous process beginning with fertilisation; essentially the only differences between zygote and full term baby being nutrition and time.
‘Rather than speaking of it as “a potential human being”’, Saunders adds perceptively, ‘it therefore makes more sense to speak of it as “a human being with potential”, “a human being in an early stage of development” or “a potential baby or adult”.’
I said earlier that the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling has staggering implications. To be sure, it has profound ramifications for fertility treatments, especially IVF – as we have seen.
But the significance of the ruling extends beyond IVF to include every scientific research or endeavour that includes the creation and subsequent destruction of human embryos such as embryonic stem cell research and embryo editing – a technique which has captured the imagination of many scientists working in this field.
It is difficult to predict how much impact the Alabama IVF decision will make on hot-button issues such as abortion and even fertility treatment in America. There is already considerable push back on the part of progressives who regard it as nothing less than the politicisation of the judiciary resulting in the politicisation of medicine.
For example, Sabrina Talukder, writing for the American Centre of Progress, argues that:
The Alabama IVF decision did not occur in a vacuum. Every abortion ban, every personhood law, every appointment of a far-right judge, and every recent post-Dobbs case on reproductive freedom helped pave the way for this decision … Extreme judges are supplanting medical science with personal and political ideologies, at the expense of the health, safety, and rights of all Americans – and, now, their right to start a family.
This leftist slant is hardly surprising. But notice that in her heavy rhetoric about reproductive rights and the right to start a family, the human embryo is totally ignored.
The Alabama ruling must be applauded for returning dignity and value once again to that ‘human being with potential’ – the human embryo.
Dr Roland Chia is Chew Hock Hin Professor at Trinity Theological College (Singapore) and Theological and Research Advisor of the Ethos Institute for Public Christianity.