Nine Republicans on the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos have the same rights as children.
On February 16, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos have the same legal rights as children in a move that immediately led the state’s largest hospital to pause in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment.
The judgment by nine Republican justices was unanimous in then concluding that « unborn children are children. » This means that the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act applies to « all children, born and unborn, without limitation. » It is standard practice in IVF treatment for multiple embryos to be fertilized, with just one returned to the women’s womb and the others discarded.
As a result, clinics across Alabama put IVF treatments on hold; Gabrielle Goidel, who was just days away from retrieving her embryos after spending $20,000 in the hope of a child, told CNN that she had never « been this stressed in her life. »
A number of Republicans hit out at the ruling, including Donald Trump, by some margin the favorite for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. He offered strong support for IVF treatment in a post on his Truth Social website.
Tom Parker was elected as an associate justice to the Alabama Supreme Court in 2004 and became chief justice in 2018.
The Montgomery native studied at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire, before becoming a doctor of law at Vanderbilt University School of Law in Nashville, Tennessee.
Prior to joining the Supreme Court, Parker served as Alabama’s deputy administrative director of courts and also operated as a legal adviser to the chief justice.
Greg Shaw joined the Alabama Supreme Court in 2009 and was reelected in 2014, then again in 2020.
Born in Birmingham, Shaw studied at Auburn University, followed by Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law, after which he was admitted to the Alabama State Bar in 1982.
