No. of Recommendations: 3
Do you think it is appealable at all? Sounds like they would have to attack the notion that a blastula (nod to the flightdoc) is a "baby".
No, I don't think it's appealable at all. This was the Alabama Supreme Court - the last court of appeal for state issues. I don't think there's a federal issue.
Nor do I think the argument you outline would work, because the decision of the court wasn't that a frozen embryo was a "baby." The Court based its decision on two things: i) it had previously ruled (consistently it says) that "unborn children" are covered by the state's wrongful death statute; and ii) there was no basis for distinguishing between an "unborn child" in a womb vs. one frozen in a tank for the purpose of the wrongful death statute.
There are counter-arguments to that latter point (which the Court disagreed with), but arguing over whether a frozen embryo is a baby isn't one of them. The question of whether an "unborn child" (at any stage of development after conception) qualifies as a "child" under the wrongful death statute was treated by the Court as settled law in the case, and not contested by any of the parties.
In fact, if we take as correct the Court's descriptions of its past rulings (I can't be bothered to check), this decision - however terrible the outcome - is probably legally correct. If people can recover damages for the wrongful death of an "unborn child," and "unborn child" isn't defined in a way that would exclude frozen embryos or blastulas, then people whose embryos are wrongfully destroyed probably do have a cause of action under the wrongful death statute. The practical consequence is that IVF can't operate in the state the way it has previously done so, but that's probably a legally sound end result from the starting principles.
