Meanwhile people run amok with automatic weapons daily.. if i were in a pun making mood i’d say “Come Again!” !?
The State of Alabama, which has already announced an intention to criminally prosecute women who terminate pregnancies with abortion pills, is grappling with the legal consequences of its staunch stance against abortion as its highest court considers whether an embryo in a fertility lab is a “human life.” The Alabama Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in a case in which six individuals say the accidental destruction of their lab embryos should be actionable in a wrongful death lawsuit.
In 2022, a judge in Mobile dismissed a lawsuit filed by families who sued the Mobile Infirmary for negligence and wrongful death. Three couples alleged that the hospital negligently allowed a patient to wander into the embryology lab, pick up five fertilized embryos, then drop those embryos rendering them unusable for the in vitro fertilization (IVF) process.
The couples, James LePage and Emily LePage, William Tripp Fonde and Caroline Fonde, and Felicia Burdick-Aysenne and Scott Aysenne, appealed that ruling and identify themselves in court filings as the “Parents” of their respective embryos. They point to Alabama’s constitution, as amended in 2018, which “acknowledges, declares, and affirms that it is the public policy of this state to ensure the protection of the rights of the unborn child in all manners and measures lawful and appropriate.”
The Alabama Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case Tuesday in a special argument session held on the University of South Alabama campus.
“Unborn child” is defined by the state legislature as, “an individual organism of the species homo sapiens from fertilization until live birth.” Indeed, and as the plaintiffs argued, the legislature further clarified that an “unborn child” under state law is defined as ” The offspring of any human person from conception until birth,” and specifically includes, “any unborn child in utero at any stage of development, regardless of viability.”
Alabama’s wrongful death statute defines wrongful death of a minor as, “When the death of a minor child is caused by the wrongful act, omission, or negligence of any person, persons, or corporation, or the servants or agents of either[.]” It continues to specifically allow a woman to recover for wrongful death of a child “whether or not the unborn child was viable at the time the abortion was performed or was born alive.”
