Nikki Haley said in an interview on Wednesday, February 21, that he agrees that she agrees with an Alabama Supreme Court ruling saying frozen embryos are considered people in the state.
Haley added that she used artificial insemination to have her son. “When you talk about an embryo, you are talking about, to me, that’s a life. And so I do see where that’s coming from when they talk about that,” she said.
What is the Alabama Supreme Court ruling?
The Alabama Supreme Court recently ruled that frozen embryos in test tubes should be considered children. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Tuesday, February 20, that the ruling would cause “exactly the type of chaos that we expected when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and paved the way for politicians to dictate some of the most personal decisions families can make.”
This week, the ruling was issued in appeals cases brought by couples whose embryos were destroyed back in 2020. This happened when a hospital patient removed frozen embryos from tanks of liquid nitrogen in Mobile, and then dropped them.
The majority opinions of the judges said that an 1872 statute that allows parents to sue over the wrongful death of a minor child applies to “unborn children,” and “extrauterine children” are no exceptions. “Even before birth, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory,” Chief Justice Tom Parker wrote in a concurring opinion, according to The New York Times.
Days after the ruling, the University of Alabama at Birmingham announced it was pausing IVF treatments. “We are saddened that this will impact our patients’ attempt to have a baby through IVF, but we must evaluate the potential that our patients and our physicians could be prosecuted criminally or face punitive damages for following the standard of care for IVF treatments,” the university announced.