The state law that gives 'personhood' proponents a new path to attack abortion rights
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Stories of couples splitting up, then fighting over frozen embryos pop to the fore every now and then. There’s Sofia Vergara’s battle with her ex-fiance, now avowed opponent of abortion Nick Loeb, who wants to use embryos they created together against heThe state law that gives 'personhood' proponents a new path to attack abortion rights
Stories of couples splitting up, then fighting over frozen embryos pop to the fore every now and then. There’s Sofia Vergara’s battle with her ex-fiance, now avowed opponent of abortion Nick Loeb, who wants to use embryos they created together against her wishes. Loeb tried to move the case to Louisiana, the only state that gives embryos standing to sue, but a Louisiana judge ruled against him—initially as a non-resident—and determined the embryos are “citizens of California.” So then Loeb “moved” to Louisiana to take a second shot at a win—and it seems he may have gotten it. On his second attempt in Louisiana, Loeb sued under the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act. Vergara fought to remove the case to federal court, arguing that the law covers children, not embryos, but Loeb took the case back to state court. There, the judge determined it’s a “custody case over which federal courts lack jurisdiction.” Both the removal to state court and the judge’s wording bode poorly for Vergara. Now Arizona’s creeping in Louisiana’s direction. It hasn’t given embryos full personhood, but legislators have passed a law—in effect as of July 1—that specifies what happens to frozen embryos in the event of disagreement over the disposition of embryos upon divorcing. Whichever spouse intends to use the embryos gets the embryos from now on in Arizona, effectively forcing parenthood upon the spouse that doesn’t want them used. The argument underlying the law is that embryos are people; they should be treated as children under law. Once someone has voluntarily contributed to the formation of an embryo, that embryo’s right to life supersedes the contributor’s rights—meaning they “cannot be legally terminated at the whim of others,” as the Thomas More Society puts it. Anti-abortion groups like the Thomas More Society have been crusading for frozen embryos’ rights all over the country. If the Arizona law’s upheld, their next step would be getting a court to declare that just as an embryo in a freezer has rights, so too does an embryo in utero. “The new law is in fact an end around aimed at establishing the ‘personhood’ of unborn embryos,” confirms Rich Vaughn, chair of the American Bar Association’s committee on fertility technology and founder of the International Fertility Law Group. The law specifics that the objecting spouse “has no parental responsibilities … and no right, obligation or interest with respect to” any children that come of using the embryos. On the one hand, that means the objecting spouse won’t be liable for child support; on the other, they’ll become a biological parent without consent and forfeit any right to see the child that’s half genetically theirs by the simple act of opposition. Read more