The Alabama Supreme Court ruled Friday that frozen embryos are people. The court ruled that anyone who mistakenly drops and destroys frozen embryos could be held liable in a wrongful-death lawsuit, writing that it had long held that unborn children are “children” and that that was also true for frozen embryos, affording the fertilized eggs the same protection as babies under the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.

So the destruction of a frozen embryo that resides not in a woman’s womb, but in a freezer in a fertility clinic in Alabama is now punishable in that state in the same way that causing the death of a child is. Yikes!

This ruling comes as at least 11 Repugnican-controlled states have broadly defined personhood as beginning at fertilization in their state laws.

Alabama’s Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Parker quoted the Bible as he examined the “sanctity” of unborn life. “Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself,” Parker wrote. “Even before birth, all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.” Double yikes!

So let’s take a closer look. Most of these frozen embryos belong to couples that are attempting to have a baby through a process called in-vitro fertilization, or IVF. IVF is a medical procedure in which doctors extract eggs from ovaries and fertilize them with sperm outside the body, forming embryos that can subsequently be moved to the uterus.

To give a patient the best chance at a pregnancy, multiple embryos are created in the hopes that a patient can try again if an attempt at a pregnancy fails. As a result, as many eggs as possible are often fertilized and kept frozen. There are hundreds of thousands of patients who depend on treatments like this each year and countless embryos are frozen each year.

Think of all of the socio-economic and political implications that this ruling has. If frozen embryos are children, then…

• should frozen embryos be counted in the Census Bureau’s population count for purposes of each state’s representation in Congress and for distribution of federal funds to the states?
• should frozen embryos be considered to be dependent children for which parents can use the child deduction on federal and state taxes?
• should parents be able to establish a tax-advantaged college savings account for each of their frozen embryos?
• should parents fill out preschool applications for their frozen embryos?
• should parents set up playgroups for their frozen embryos?
• if IVF is successful and results in a pregnancy, if the new parents destroy their other fertilized embryos, are such parents serial killers?

These are just some of the questions that this decision by the Alabama Supreme Court raises that must be addressed.