February 06, 2005
A culture of life
I have to say I'm of mixed feelings about this Illinois court decision.
The short version is a man and a wife were going through an IVF procedure. And the clinic accidentally destroyed their fertilized embryo. The brought a wrongful death suit against the clinic and, after having it initially tossed out, were told the suit could go forward on appeal.
The court stated that "a pre-embryo is a 'human being' ...whether or not it is implanted in its mother's womb." He based the decision on the state's Wrongful Death Act which allows a family to bring wrongful death suits if their fetus is destroyed by accident or assault.
The implications of the decision, much like the law it was based upon, is that it can have effects on Abortion and Embryonic Stem Cell research.
From a purely legal standpoint, this case probably could have been decided purely as a contract breach, though that would not allow (I'm pretty sure) the parents to recover for emotional distress and the rest. Also, I'm not sure if the court would be able to determine an 'expectancy' award in this case - so it is possible if they went the contract route, they could only recover the costs to make more eggs, bring them back to where they were.
Certainly, as I am involved in an IVF process right now, that couldn't begin to cover their true losses.
On the other hand, there is no guarantee that that embryo would actually have become a person. And, while though the same can be said of any child before it is born, I think there is much less likely of a frozen embryo successfully being implanted and carried to term than a fetus that is already in the womb.
One might argue that 'choice' comes into play here. That abortion and embryos donated for research were done willingly, while those that are accidentally destroyed or destroyed via assault are not. Is it possible to view embryos in this dualistic manner? The only other possibility seems to be to either declare embryos life - and have that in effect for abortion and the like, or bar people like the family in this case from being able to bring wrongful death suits.
Comments:Rick DeMent said (at February 7, 2005 07:17 AM):
I wonder if couple will get charged for manslaughter once they concive and discard the unused embryos?
Henry said (at February 7, 2005 08:13 AM):
That's a good question. Especially since all IVF procedures involves creating more embryos than you need. I do understand why they want go this route, but it does have some implications which could effect IVF procedures. One reason they take so many, is that the retrieval process is expensive and lengthy. IVF clinics may start to only take what they need for each transfer, and if it doesn't work, need to retrieve again which will push up the costs for the patients. All so that aren't responsible for storage of the extras.
Rick DeMent said (at February 8, 2005 08:42 AM):
Consider this a track back, they don't often work.