Frozen embryos are people? In the world of politics, at least

An Alabama Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos are “children” offers a sad example of the age-old law of unintended consequences.

- Clarence Page

Instead of simply protecting the developing life of the embryos to help childless couples become parents, the court’s move throws the procedure’s future — and the national abortion debate — into a state of confusion.

Immediately after the ruling was handed down on Thursday, healthcare providers in the state suspended in vitro fertilization services out of fear that embryos could be destroyed, even if only by accident.

In a decision that rattled the reproductive rights debate, a majority of the justices ruled that state law clearly declared that “unborn children are ‘children.’ ”Particularly dramatic were the words of the court’s very conservative chief justice, Tom Parker, for whom the Constitution and legal precedent were not enough to ex

Clarence Page Tribune Content Agency plain his reasoning. 

Nor was there any presumption of a separation between church and state, in his opinion, which invoked Bible passages and the writings of 16th- and 17th-century theologians.