A New ‘Peculiar Institution’ Treats Human Beings as Legal Property

Jul 22, 2018 by

by Joe Carter, The Gospel Coalition:

The Story: A new Arizona law requires courts to give embryos created by IVF to the spouse who plans to use them to have a baby when a couple decides to have a divorce.

The Background: The Department of Health and Human Services says there are more than 600,000 human embryos being kept cryogenically frozen in the United States. Most of them will die before they ever have a chance to be born, because the parents who created them choose not to let them continue their development. In some cases, though, one of the parents does want to allow the child to be born. If the other parent disagrees, courts often rule in favor of the person who does not want the child.

The new Arizona law—the first of its kind in the United States— requires courts to award the embryos to the spouse who wants them for the purpose of having children. However, to protect the interest of the spouse who does not want the embryos, the bill also removes any right, obligation, or interest between the spouse and the child.

The law also states that if only one of these spouses is biologically related to the embryos, the court must award the embryos to the spouse who is biologically related. If both spouses are biologically related to the embryos and both want the embryos for the purpose of having children, the court must determine which parent provides the best chance for the embryos to develop to birth.

What It Means: When Roe v. Wade appealed to the 14th amendment’s “due process” clause, it decreed that the state cannot deprive a person of life, liberty, or property without due process. Since the fetus is a separate living entity from the mother (if it weren’t, then ending the life of the fetus would end the mother’s as well) there is no deprivation of life. In a similar manner the creation of the “right to privacy” cannot apply to the term liberty either, otherwise all laws against prostitution, drug use, suicide, and so on would have been struck down as well. The only area that the clause could have applied to within the context of abortion was to property.

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