NEWS: Judge Rules Fertilized Eggs Are Human Beings

CULTURE: Judge Rules Fertilized Eggs Are Human Beings

An Illinois judge ruled Friday in favor of a couple seeking a wrongful death suit against a fertility clinic that accidentally discarded their fertilized eggs.

The plaintiffs, Alison Miller and Todd Parrish, stored nine fertilized embryos in January 2000 at the Center for Human Reproduction in Chicago. After a successful treatment, the married couple believed their fertilized egg--or blastocyst--would be preserved by the Chicago clinic for later implantation. But six months later, when the couple was ready to conceive, they learned that the embryos had not been put in frozen storage, but were mistakenly discarded.

The couple first sued for damages in 2002, claiming the incident was a case of wrongful death. Two judges rejected the couple's plea before Friday, when Lawrence offered his ruling and an 11-page memorandum supporting their wrongful-death argument.

While it is unclear whether the ruling will affect abortion law or not, if the ruling stands, experts say, it could frustrate the work of fertility clinics and the future of stem-cell research.

Nurse drops a test tube, Judge calls it murder...I understand it's inconvienent and the clinic should have some kind of liability but to call this "wrongful death" is kind of pushing it in my opinion.

The impact on abortion law will be minimal or nonexistant because this is a state case and federal abortion laws, which are based on an implied right of privacy in the US Constitution, trump state laws.

I don't know enough about IL state law to give a serious opinion, but this seems kind of insane to me. I mean, they should for sure recover if the embryos were destroyed negligently, but not on a wrongful death cause of action.

it's not murder. It's wrongful death. e.g. what OJ got nailed for in the civil case that he lost.

This is so fuckin ridiculous. When will this all end?!?!

When president Bush gets us awesome tort reform. NOT.

Since when does some random court in Illinois have the power to decide when human life begins?

I understand the legal differences, I was going for effect

Generally the state courts get to interpret their state laws and constitutions. It's nothing new for the courts in state X to say what issue Y means in state X.

Carry on, then.

By that rationale fertility clinics should never be allowed to discard fertilized eggs even if they have outlasted their shelf-life. They should even be obliged to implant every last egg into a mother, or they'll be causing countless wrongful deaths every year!

Also, hypothetically say the couple had ten eggs at the clinic, shouldn't they be obliged to bring every one of them to term or be a party to the same wrongful deaths? After all, if they just choose one, they're killing nine of their babies.

Edited for clarity

[Edited on Feb 06, 2005 11:04PM]

Expecting logic from an inferior state court is like asking for disappointment...

Yeah. Funny how that happens, eh? I'm sure it's just an oversight.

so, the parents had NINE embryos frozen? and those were all human lives?

did they intend to give birth to all nine? if not, shouldn't they have some sort of lawsuit against them for denying those embryos the right to develop and grow into good christian kids?

Edit: My bad. I misread something.

[Edited on Feb 07, 2005 2:10AM]

Sorry, the number nine was intended as a hypothetical. I'm sure they probably had more than one though!

those crazy conservative judges! they should start sueing women for wasting theyre eggs every month. doesnt the american people know theres a race war a commin?!


*additional sarcasm edit*
and i bet jesus mark II was in them eggs!

[Edited on Feb 07, 2005 by dirtyprude]

Man, next they'll get me for the millions of murders I've committed over the years from all that masturbating.

If that becomes murder, we're all doomed to quintillions of years in prison...

Right.
It’s just, aren’t these debates usually framed in a right to privacy context?
“When life begins” seems like an awfully philosophical way to go about it. I guess that’s the point though.

The right to privacy comes into play when a medical procedure is in question. The right to privacy started with birth control laws that prohibited doctors from speaking with patients about birth control options and proceded through a line of cases to roe v. wade. So, when life begins has nothing to do with right to privacy. Different states define it differently. In CA, e.g., you can be charged with murder for causing the death of a fetus (hence the double murder conviction for Scott Peterson a few weeks ago). Some states make it the 3rd trimester, though... before that it's not murder. But in CA the change was in response to a case where a guy kicked his gf in the stomach to try to kill their unborn child and succeded and the courts ruled it wasn't murder bc the unborn child was not a person as defined in the CA murder statute.

Gotcha

I don't know about the rest of them, but this one is wondering why you missed the part where the judge cited Illinois state law in his decision, as was clearly quoted in the article. That would not be an 'activist' judge, as he is ruling according to the law as written, rather than as how he wishes it were written.

This totally changes the ending to that episode of Law and Order: SVU where the guy broke into the fertility lab and smashed all those fertilized eggs.. Benson and Stabler are going to be pissed.