Single-Cell Citizens: Whacky Law Gets Anti-Choice Brigade Hot & Bothered by KTK

The anti-choice blogosphere is all a-flutter over this report of a recent preliminary decision in an Illinois lawsuit. A couple sued an IVF clinic which inadvertently destroyed some stored, frozen conceptuses, on grounds of wrongful death. The judge in the case denied (apparently – the article couldn’t be bothered to provide actual details) a motion to dismiss on grounds that non-persons can’t be wrongfully dead, holding that:

the state’s Wrongful Death Act, . . . allows lawsuits to be filed if unborn fetuses are killed in an accident or assault. “The state of gestation or development of a human being” does not preclude taking legal action, the act says.

[Judge] Lawrence also cited an Illinois state law that says an “unborn child is a human being from the time of conception and is, therefore, a legal person.”

If this goes through, it would certainly be a victory for anti-choicers who have been sneaking quasi-personhood status for embryos into the law at every opportunity (the “Laci & Connor Peterson Bill” – providing for two murder convictions in the case of the death of one pregnant woman being only the most egregious example). It could have indirect implications for the abortion debate – it would more directly make IVF procedures and embryo research all but impossible. Already sex-negatives are crowing over this precedent.

A bit of perspective should have a calming effect: the judge explicitly cited two aspects of Illinois law that declare an embryo to be a legal person (more examples of the “back-door strategy” to outlawing women’s choice). These laws have never been tested in court, and fly directly in the face of long-established case law and legal theory that legal personhood attains at birth (not during gestation – certainly not before the fertilized egg even approaches a woman’s body!). This ruling certainly sets up a legal showdown over that principle, but it does nothing as far as actually overriding it. (In fact, the ruling merely states that the case can proceed – it does not even state that the legal theory the couple is banking on is valid – only that they have the right to argue their case.) The judge is relying – as a trial judge pretty much has to – on the fact that the laws exist – he is not asserting as legal precedent that the laws are Constitutional. That fight will – no doubt – come later.

What we have here is not a legal precedent or a groundbreaking ruling, not a change to the legal status of embryos in any way. What we have is an example of the potential danger of the growing movement to grant – directly or through deception – legal status to microscopic cell clumps in preference to women. The case could easily reach the Supreme Court, where women’s rights are no longer safe – so it is certainly significant. But so far nothing really has happened. Whether the high Court will uphold a longstanding legal doctrine that underlies vast swathes of law (much having nothing to do with sex or abortion), or wipe out the very concept of legal personhood in its eagerness to roll back women’s rights, remains to be seen. The Illinois legislature was clearly hoping for the latter, and they may get their wish – but not this week.