The personhood of IVF embryos will remain a significant issue for years to come

By: George Matwijec, originally published August 27, 2025, LifeSite News

The question of when life begins isn’t just for scientists or philosophers anymore. It’s a matter of law.

(LifeSiteNews) — Let’s revisit the 2024 Alabama Supreme Court decision to  recognize frozen embryos as children, a landmark case for the country. Considering recent attempts to legislate protection for the IVF industry, it’s important to review all the nuances of the decision because this issue is going to continue to evolve across the country. Understanding all sides of the issue helps to make better decisions for both unborn children and parents.

First, the decision didn’t make it a crime for an embryo to be destroyed. It ruled on the side of civil law, not criminal law. Therefore, if a frozen embryo were destroyed, even accidentally, then a parent could sue for damages. That is exactly what happened in the case before the state Supreme Court: a patient wandered into a medical lab housing frozen embryos and dropped a container of them, thereby destroying them. The parents claimed they could sue the lab because those were their future children.

To further explain this, Alabama has a law called the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. This means you could be sued for civil damages if you accidentally killed a child. Over time that law was further defined through the Brady Act, in which the word “child” was expanded to include an unborn child – so if you accidentally killed a pregnant woman, you could be civilly liable also for the unborn child.

However, is a frozen embryo an unborn child? The Alabama Supreme Court  ruled it was: “[The Wrongful Death of a Minor Act applies] to all unborn children without limitation. And that includes unborn children who are not located in utero at the time they are killed.”

Also part of this decision was the foundation to uphold the sanctity of life. Justice Jay Mitchell went through great lengths to show historically where the term “sanctity of life” comes from and how it has been used previously in court proceedings:

Justice Greg Cook opposed the majority opinion, stating that the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act was written before the invention of IVF and that its intention was only to protect children. This act was later revised by the Brady Act to include unborn children in the womb. The key phrase here is “in the womb.” A frozen embryo is outside the womb, so technically it’s not protected by the Brady Act, according to Justice Cook. The majority of justices maintained that the frozen embryo is considered an unborn child whether it’s in or outside the womb.

Another issue at hand is whether judges should make judgments that expand the law or just interpret the law. The majority acknowledged that this ruling could raise complicated issues, but they said it’s not their job to rewrite the law or avoid uncomfortable outcomes. Their job is to interpret the law as it stands. If the law now seems too broad or causes unintended problems, the legislature can always change it.

As you can imagine, the IVF industry in Alabama paused its “treatments” in view of this decision. However, the Alabama legislature stepped in and passed legislation which allowed them to continue their practice of IVF. Once again, the Brady Act, which can bring criminal charges for negligence, is only for children in the womb, not outside the womb. So the thinking goes.

But the justices of Alabama were simply attempting to be logical with their thinking. If the state is going to protect the life of an unborn child, then the embryo is unborn and therefore it should be protected. The issue of  where  the unborn child is, or is not, is a peripheral issue at best.

Part of the dissenting opinion bases its dissent on the effect the ruling will have on the IVF industry – namely that it may diminish the capacity of the IVF industry to produce multiple embryos for a greater chance of success in implantation. At this point I must point out that this is a logical fallacy. An argument is not correct or incorrect just because the effect is unwanted.

Let’s apply this to a more visible situation. During the pre-Civil War era, some statesmen argued in favor of slavery by claiming it brought economic prosperity to the states, and that freeing the slaves would be an economic disaster for the South. In this case one can easily observe how economic facts took priority over the dignity of the human person, who is an end in himself. Once the human dignity of slaves is acknowledged, then slavery is unethical. The loss of economic prosperity is an unfortunate but necessary consequence of recognizing that dignity. No one today would argue in favor of slavery because of economic advantages.

The idea of what constitutes a human person is no longer a philosophical or theological question. Stances are being taken which directly affect the lives of parents and businesses. The Supreme Court of Alabama is taking a more proactive approach by defining what a person is. The legislature of Nevada, on the other hand, recently proposed a bill which didn’t define “person” but simply stated that an embryo is not a person. Yet it is a logical fallacy to say that an embryo is not a person while not defining what a person is. I showed that  here  in this article.

As courageous and logical as the decision was, its logical consequences were not followed in the least. The Alabama legislature immediately adopted legislation protecting the IVF industry so as not to pause operations. Now one of the points brought up in the court’s decision is that other countries are handling this situation differently; such countries allow only one embryo to be implanted at a time, so there are no excess embryos and therefore no need for storage. Such a procedure would be more in line with respecting the value of human life, though it must also be clarified that IVF is never morally permissible.

What’s clear is that the law is now at a crossroads. As society wrestles with these deep questions – about the meaning of personhood, the role of science, and the sanctity of human life – Alabama has become a flashpoint. Whether other states follow this path remains to be seen. But this ruling has already made one thing clear: the question of when life begins isn’t just for scientists or philosophers anymore. It’s a matter of law, and it’s shaping lives in ways we’re only beginning to understand.

George Matwijec Ph.L is an adjunct philosophy teacher at Immaculata University who specializes in teaching knowledge and logic. 

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