Republicans in the US were this month delivered an inadvertent setback in their continued insistence that embryos and fetuses are ‘people’ with ‘rights’ that mean abortion should be illegal.
Alabama’s Supreme Court agreed with the party’s evangelical and Catholic Christians that the collection of cells that make up human embryos are ‘babies’ – ruling that several couples who were undergoing IVF (in vitro fertilisation) and who lost frozen embryos due to alleged negligence could sue under the state’s wrongful death law.
Because the ruling went well beyond the specific issue in question to declare embryos people in no uncertain terms, it led several of the state’s hospitals and clinics to suddenly and disruptively cease providing fertility treatments to avoid legal trouble.
