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Couples race to move frozen embryos out of Alabama after court defines them as children
(www.telegraph.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2024
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to be fair, the (wrongful death*) lawsuit was because the hospital or wherever they were being stored at let the frozen embryos die off. It's entirely reasonable to expect some kind of... protection... considering the reason for those to have been stored was so they might be able to have kids, etc.
*wrongful death is a bit much, mind you. But how far do you want to take the "guy beats a pregnant woman to kill the baby" types of charges? ultimately, I suspect, the issue here is that the religious nutjobs lack nuance. they see the world as black-and-white and can't fathom a possibility where there were damages in this matter, but it wasn't a "wrongful death" scenario.
From what I've previously read the agency that had the frozen embryos did not let them die off, they stored them properly in an industrial freezer kept at far below 0 temps. The issue was a person who didn't work at the clinic snuck into the room with the fridge, opened it and then dropped the embryos and ran away (the article said the assumption was because the containers were so cold he got freeze-burned). There might be a case here that they didn't do enough to stop the individual, or check on them often enough, I don't know enough details to know, but it doesn't sound like they just simply didn't care or didn't store them properly.
States have long had laws against forcibly ending someone else's pregnancy and those have stood up even before Roe died. It's not usually on the level of murder/manslaughter, but at a minimum it's been treated as a destruction of property. You don't have to treat the embryo as a person to charge someone with aggravated battery or something similar.
The main issue here is the broadness of this ruling (besides the whole quoting the Bible thing) which equates embryos with full-human life. It won't change a whole lot in this case, the families could have still sued for negligence or destruction of property, or any number of other civil remedies of this was denied, but now it's laid the ground work to do much worse things in the future.
Looking close, you’re right. Vandals got in.
I would suggest the facility was negligent in their security arrangements, as far as wrongful death (again, it’s a pretty dubious “if”, that it goes that far), it would be like somebody dying because the building wasn’t up to code when an arson came by.
My assumption is, though, that there’s a budget-rate ~~warm body~~ security guard; and between shit pay, shit training, shittier oversight… the guard couldn’t be arsed to care. (Alternatively, the guard was going to sell them for drug money.)
The good news for the facility… if their lawyers were any good in that contract they’d have gotten an indemnity clause and can pass that buck. (Liability is a bitch; and she hits hard. The security company will probably go poof unless they’re the size of G4S or Securitas)
In any case… personally, it doesn’t rise to wrongful death, but I can see a need for nuance. I would, personally, suggested the couple treat it as property, similar to a safety deposit box.
How could it be battery if the embryos aren't treated as people? Nobody was battered. No victim was even present.
For the record, if we treat this more like a safety deposit box; the couple are the victims here.
It should probably be treated that way.
Their argument is because those embryos had potential to be human… they should be treated as human.
I don’t buy it, and it’s certainly not something that should establish the precedent that embryos=babies.
So sue for property damage. Harvesting embryos is an expensive and painful process. Hell you could even sue for pain and suffering.
But wrongful death is just ridiculous.
Gee, that’s…. More or less what I’m saying?
Sorry for the confusion, the battery part of my reply was related to forcibly ending someone else's pregnancy, which would have to involve some kind of battery unless it's like poison or something, not related to the embryos in the freezer. There is no battery to those since they are not people.