Blame the Supreme Court for Alabama Embryo Ruling: Noah Feldman

In a stunningly bad decision, the Alabama Supreme Court has held that frozen embryos in a lab count as children for the purposes of the state’s wrongful death law. It would take some time to enumerate everything that’s wrong with the holding. To name just a few of the most obvious problems, it’s an exercise in judicial activism; it ignores the original meaning of the 1872 statute in question (which obviously didn’t anticipate modern reproductive technology); it’s disastrous for IVF in the state; and it’s a stunning indication of the crazy things that are already happening in state courts since ...