Frozen embryos are “children,” according to Alabama’s Supreme Court

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 416 points –
Frozen embryos are “children,” according to Alabama’s Supreme Court
arstechnica.com

Frozen embryos are “children,” according to Alabama’s Supreme Court::IVF often produces more embryos than are needed or used.

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Not sure exactly what companies store these frozen embryos, but if the company closes or you pass. How are the embryos disposed of?

Does the company need to keep them frozen and alive indefinitely? Or is it murder if they are terminated by the company? What happens if the freezers/cooler breaks? Who is responsible for the now classified murder?

The woman. It's always the woman in christian fundamentalism.

This is according to a friend who had it done:

If the treatment worked and there were embryos left over, they waited X amount of time, I think a year or so, and if they don’t hear anything from you then they are destroyed.

My friend said she got a reminder but didn’t want to think about it, that it was too hard, so she never responded and assumes they’re gone. She said that to her, she never told them to do it, and that helps her if she ever thinks about it. She ended up having twins.

Should be a gofundme paid for by the morons who support this nonsense. It would be excruciating expensive, too.

In the UK you pay a monthly fee to keep a frozen egg.

This is an infuriating aspect of this case. The courts could have held the clinic responsible for this loss without declaring that all frozen embryos are children by invoking the "prime mover" concept. Other courts have used it in, for example, surrogacy cases. In short, that concept holds that it's the intent of the parent(s) that matters, as the prime movers in the process of bringing a child into the world, not just the mixing of some genetic material. Those destroyed embryos could have become children, as it was the parents' intention to do so. And if nobody intends to implant embryos, for whatever reason, without the intent to make a child, they're merely organic material, neatly sidestepping those questions.

But, of course, the court wanted to impose its religious orthodoxy rather than issue a sensible ruling. Now we have those thorny questions.