Alabama Supreme Court Cites the Bible in Terrifying Embryo Ruling

Why did this current event get moved out of current events??

 

Actually they both are every time they have sex. Think of all of the thousands of sperms who do not get to fertilize an egg that die after sex.

 

As do I. I don't seek for it to be called a wrongful death. I am just willing to count the death of a pre-born by anyone other that the one whose bodily autonomy it is violating, if it is doing so, to be counted as a wrongful death, legally. One of my long standing arguments has been that if a living born person cannot legally violate a woman's bodily autonomy, then neither can a living unborn person, thus the unborn having either claimed life (which it does have) or personhood (which is debatable) holds no bearing on a woman's bodily autonomy. But in situations where there is no violation of bodily autonomy, either of those two, or at least the combination of those two, could constitute a wrongful death legally.

 

Basically I agree. If such a concept were to be put to use, the confidence in the case and verdict must be near absolute.

There is a serial killer known as BTK, who selected 10 random victims over a period of many years, and when finally caught, told the court with great detail the process of killing each one- with the same emotion as reading a grocery list. That confession has become famous, you can watch it here:

Then, there are the Carr brothers. They broke into an apartment where 5 friends had gathered. Stole cash, credit cards, vehicles- and took them all captive, in winter. Drove them out of town to an empty, snow-covered field, made them strip naked and perform lewd sexual acts. Then, they shot each one of them. However, one girl was hit with a grazing shot to the head. She laid still, and the killers left. She walked naked and bleeding, about a quarter mile through the snow towards a light in a farmhouse for help. The Carrs were quickly caught with the loot and identified.

These three are in the same prison today, being housed, fed, clothed, and provided medical care by the taxpayers. Assuming some bleeding heart parole board or governor doesn't change their situation, they will spend their lives that way, punishing the public with the cost of their existence. We are also demonstrating that the price of multiple heinous murders is free everything, with conditions restraining your freedom and limiting your lifestyle.

There is a lot of psychology involved in understanding how we can make laws work. Most of the time we are thinking of sentences as a discipline to teach offenders and rehabilitate them. Results tell us that is failing. We also seek to make examples, so that others can see that certain behaviors have consequences. In the case of intentional murders like these, the reason for prompt execution is two-fold. One is to show the consequences of such crimes are quick and deadly. The other is to permanently remove a toxic element from society.

I won't get into the details of how failure to use the consequences correctly actually promotes and enables more crime, but it does.
Basically, weak consequences prove to offenders that they can afford the price of crime.

 

This argument is much like an environmental group declaring acorns to be oak trees, a thousand of them to be a forest- and demanding they be protected by the US Forest Service.

A lot of people are going off the rails, losing their mental balance today. Unfortunately, many of them are in positions of power. It's reasonable and appropriate to tell them they are acting stupidly.

 

I think they DO think about them. They just simply DO NOT CARE.

If it were "gods" plan for you to have kids, then you would. Its that simple for them.

 

Because its against the law to do so.....just like pregnant women can't claim the baby in their belly.

 

What if a woman miscarries and her partner feels the woman wasn't being careful enough to protect the fetus? Can she be charged with murder? Can the driver of a car who causes an accident resulting in a woman miscarrying be charged with involuntary manslaughter?

If a woman in AL commits adultery can she be stoned to death?

 

Like you, I am a rightist that is 100% behind the notion of abortions being legal. I say that to convey that my opinion is not based on trying to further the anti-abortion position. Also like you, I see this ruling and think that with the predictable leftist spin on this topic, the optics look bad in an election year, which is not something that I want to see. The left is looking to demagogue the hell out of the abortion issue during this election year, and this will no doubt provide them plenty of ammo.

Unlike you however, I do not see the reality of this being anything close to the spin. I feel as if you have fallen for the leftist spin, and you are inadvertently doing their bidding in the process. This is a civil statute, not a criminal law. The existence of this civil statute in no way criminalizes destroying an in vitro fertilized egg. As such, nothing about this is going to shut down IVF in Alabama as some have claimed, nor is it a slippery slope to outlawing abortions. There is not any mechanism or logic whatsoever that would dictate this this would be something that IVF clinic would even oppose.

This entire case is in reference to someone breaking into an IVF clinic and maliciously destroying property.

Being able to sue for wrongful death merely provides an option to compensate the victims beyond the standard cost of the beaker, supplies, and maybe the cost of the medical procedure itself. Such a determination would be woefully inadequate compensation for let say a couple where the man has an illness that will make him sterile, and the couple decides to freeze some fertilized eggs so that they can have children in the future. Or in the case of a spouse that has a deadly illness and they still wanted to have their children etc. In that type of situation, just being able to recover the cost of the procedure is a woefully inadequate recompense for an aggrieved party. For this same reason, a number of states have wrongful death statutes for pets. Just reimbursing the cost of replacement of a pet does not adequately compensate the victims, so a wrongful death statute applying to pets is a way of being able to achieve a fairer approximation of what their negligence created. This does not create a slippery slope to anything. It is merely the creation of a mechanism to compensate victims for a loss that can clearly go far beyond the simple cost of the procedure.

There are some many utterly nonsensical decisions made in civil courts, that this one does not even register a little tiny blip on the radar screen of crazy civil decisions. If you think about it, you can say that it even makes sense. The loss of a frozen embryo DOES justify a civil penalty beyond the simple cost of the procedure. If the argument is that it should not be reimbursed as highly as a living person, I would agree with that, and my assumption would be that the court would attach a lower value to an embryo versus a living person. If they set the value equal to a living person I would have a problem with that, but as far as I know, that has not happened.

The bottom line is that this is essentially the same concept as wrongful death statutes for pets that exist in several states. The outrage at this is much ado about nothing. The only consequence of this statute is that it gives the ability for the aggrieved to be more fairly compensated for what was a malicious act that created harm.

 

Could you cite the law for me, because I can't find it.

 

OK that seems that is far afield from this topic. IVF embryos have nothing to do with a woman's body autonomy since they are not in fact inside a woman's body.

 

"Pro-lifers" would save one living infant from a burning building over 1,000 embryos because they know the difference. Pretending otherwise is childish.

 

And a parent would save their favorite child if given the choice between the two. Not sure of your point.

 

The danger in such rulings that may appear to be limited is that they often open the door to unlimited abuse. While it would be nice to be able to rely on the courts latitude in cases where that doorway would be present, everyday history says that is a foolish assumption. We know that if it can be abused- it will be abused. All this crap we are seeing right now in dozens of issues suffer from exactly the same thing= distortions of intent and purpose to the point that everything is negotiable, a field of grey type issue with no limits, no center line. Common sense is not only uncommon today, it is vastly outnumbered by the lack of it.

We are allowing men to walk into womens dressing rooms because they say- I feel like a woman right now....
Parents recently lost their foster child, a teenage boy- because he decided he was a girl and wanted to be addressed as such with the female nouns. His parents refused- but the authority agreed, and took him away from them. A women who had given 60 years of volunteer service to the MS society- was booted out because she didn't understand the DEI policy they adopted.
Would you really trust anyone anymore to do the right thing because it was the right thing?

There's dozens of what are unquestionably common sense issues that have been destroyed by the idea that reality is negotiable, and you can make it up on the fly.
Once you open the door to it, you have a hell of a time trying to get rid of it.

 

the point is there is a difference between a living infant and embryos. I said nothing about a parent saving their own child.

 

I understand the slippery slope argument well. I simply do not think this is one of those cases, for the very reasons that I laid out.

This ruling does nothing other than provide an option in civil court for aggrieved parties to recover a more realistic reflection of the harm they suffered vs if they could only recover the monetary value of the medical procedure. I dont think that the notion that a fertilized embryo ( especially in the circumstances I already laid out) carries more value than its medical cost is even a controversial position. I see it as being very similar in logic to wrongful death for a pet which already exists in many locales.

While I have a great deal of respect for most of your positions, I sincerely think you have this one wrong. I believe that you have fallen for the leftist spin which is inherent in the article that is quoted in the OP. This is not a slippery slope to anywhere IMO.

 

This would be more of a case of where the law would state what is eligible to be claimed, so short of point to a section and saying look, it's not there, it can't be proven. And the natural counter of maybe it's some place else further proves the can't prove a negative. And given that the tax law is something that takes up most of a room for the federal, yet alone looking the states individually, the proper onus is on anyone claiming that something is allowed to be claimed to prove that, not proving that something can't be claimed.

 

That is indeed part of my point. The simple fact that the embryos in question are not part of the woman's body would mean that their status of possessing life and/or personhood would come into play. Thus a wrongful death charge could factor into this situation where it would not with the embryo in the woman's body. I would also point out that there are pro choice people would would still claim bodily autonomy on the woman's part even for those embryos not yet inserted.

 

It would seem rational that the first question to ask is why it would be deemed necessary to declare a frozen embryo a human being in the first place. I see as I stated in a following post, that's comparable to declaring an acorn to be an oak tree, and the thousand acorns in your field to be a forest, and thereby- your property is subject to control of the US Forest Service.

Application of Law relies greatly on precedent, which justifies something in a court today, because a previous action established an acceptance or value. It's not limited in new cases by the original reasoning or to the same application as before- it just opens the door. Once you open the door, that precedent can become the enabling element of a great deal of things that otherwise would not be allowed. I'm not saying I know what kind of things that will be- I'm saying we have a ruling establishing a precedent that neither makes sense or is needed, and that is a dangerous step. This decision establishes precedent with huge risks.

We didn't wind up in the state of national insanity we are in because we were using common sense. Nonsense has become currency for reasonable discussion and negotiation. It got to the table because someone opened the door to it in smaller ways and didn't think it would hurt. The mental gymnastics these people are capable of is unlimited. If it's not the plan in the first place but creates another wacko opportunity, they will use it.

There's little we can change about today, but tomorrow is always coming, and we can change that by the decisions we make today. If they are questionable, we should err on the side of safety. If we don't look to the risks they may present tomorrow, and choose poorly, when tommorrow becomes today- we are stuck with them.

As far as left spin, I would hope I'm least vulnerable person to that you know. I expect smoke and mirrors to be part of everything they do or support. Rarely disappointed. I may be wrong, but I am aware and careful.

 

As I have stated, they deemed it necessary, solely to enable the ability to provide a more realistic reflection of the loss that can be recovered in a civil verdict. In some cases, this value is far higher than the cost of the medical procedure.

It may be comparable to declaring that an acorn is an oak tree, but only if that determination exists for the sole purpose of enabling a higher civil recovery because something about that acorn legitimately makes it more valuable than a typical tree seedling that could be purchased at any seed retailer. For that analogy to reflect this situation, you would also have to stipulate that another acorn cannot be acquired. I think it is safe to say that for a couple that is incapable of providing further sperm or eggs, the value of that embryo is FAR greater than if they are capable of simply providing more samples. For most capable people, this would not be a big deal. For those that truly could not provide more, you have impacted their life to an incredible degree, and a civil verdict should certainly reflect this greater value when destroyed via malicious intent.

I fully understand and recognize the slippery slope argument, and am always very cautious about any new law as a consequence of that concept. With that being said, are you aware of ANY precedent that has transferred from civil statute into the realm of criminal law? I am not aware of this happening in the past. I could see a criminal statute perhaps being a precedent in a civil case, but not the other way around. Perhaps I am wrong. If you have examples of such I am all ears.

If this concept only exists as a civil statute used to more accurately reflect the harm suffered vs an inanimate object, where is it that you fear where this slippery slope could possibly lead within the civil system? It seems to me that other than providing a higher dollar value, there is nowhere else for it to go civilly. As a result, I do not believe that the slippery slope argument applies.

 

I think you lost me. That doesn't make any sense.

 

You don't think this ruling has implications for a fertilized egg in a woman's womb?

On Friday, the Alabama Supreme Court decided that embryos created through in-vitro fertilization would be protected under the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, effectively classifying single-celled, fertilized eggs as children.

 

That didn't take long.

Major Alabama hospital stops IVF treatment after court rules embryos are children

Alabama’s largest hospital has stopped in vitro fertilization treatment after a state court ruled that frozen embryos are children under state law.

A spokesperson for the University of Alabama at Birmingham released a statement Wednesday announcing that the division of Reproductive
Endocrinology and Infertility has paused in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures as they asses the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision that a
“cryopreserved embryo” is a child.

The ruling puts patients and physicians conducting IVF treatment at risk of criminal prosecution, which is a significant concern for the university that runs the nation’s eighth-largest hospital.

“We are saddened that this will impact our patients’ attempt to have a baby through IVF, but we must evaluate the potential that our patients and our physicians could be prosecuted criminally or face punitive damages for following the standard of care for IVF treatments,” the statement said.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/21/embryos-children-uab-alabama-00142508

Conservatives have lost their collective minds when it comes to reproduction.

 

The case wasn't about that. The embryos were in storage, so yapping about woman's body autonomy isn't really the topic.

 

I see this as very clear. Once you declare a frozen embryo to be a human, you place anything that happens to that embryo under the same laws that address crimes against all human beings.
And there is little barrier in the definition of frozen, so it becomes a validation of arguments against all abortion of any kind at any stage for any reason. It is a precedent that will be used to validate arguments not even related. It's also a state supreme court declaration. While it may be in a civil case- as a precedent, it will be equally valid in a criminal case. You can't argue that something is or is not human varying and depending on the nature of the case. That would be like saying water is only wet on certain days.

You simply can no longer assume, even in the smallest degree- that the intentional distortion and abuse of law will be avoided as a result of the honor of those who control indictments and prosecutions.
Several situations illustrates this. One example-

Long ago in Honduras, they passed a law saying lobster exports had to be packed in wooden boxes. Why? Their lumber industry made the boxes. Plastics were encroaching, but they had no plastics industry, and so protected their lumber industry. Eventually, they quit enforcing the law- but they failed to remove it from the books.

The USA has a law that allows prosecution of American citizens for violating foreign laws, called the Lacey Act. Another is sometimes involved, called the Logan Act.

Under the Lacey act, for reasons not known- some people in the business of importing seafoods including lobster tails from Honduras, now arriving in plastic bags- were prosecuted and sentenced to years in federal prison for violating the Honduras law that Honduras no longer honors.
One of the places you can read the details at: https://www.heritage.org/government-regulation/commentary/eight-years-bagging-lobsters.

You may also be aware of the "asset forfeiture" rules, where cash or goods may be presumed to be ill-gotten gains can be seized, without charge or conviction- and kept. These are situations where the nature of the laws has permitted gross abuses that were probably never intended by the people who created them, but they opened a door. This has created a revenue stream for many with the power to use it. The money became part of their budget income, and they don't want to lose it. About 50,000 such seizures a year take place.

My general view of our system is we have too many laws trying to define too many things that do not need defining, and in doing so have created so many loopholes and confusion that we do more damage than good in the effort. That has combined with the decline in personal character, more people taking advantage of them, and increasing tolerance of the abuses.
Nobody can play a game if they can't understand the rules. If the rules can't be understood or are unfair, they invite violations. The laws become tools of abuse, and people can't trust them. This has been true from day one, as illustrated in this quote from a founding father:

“It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow.”
― James Madison

I'm not trying to change your mind. I'm explaining why I have the position I do.