Pro-Life Groups File Briefs in Frozen Embryo Wrongful Death Case

Pro-Life Groups File Briefs in Frozen Embryo Wrongful Death Case

By Jim Brown and Jenni Parker
November 27, 2006

(AgapePress) - Several pro-life organizations based in Illinois and other U.S. states are backing a lawsuit brought by two Illinois parents over a Chicago in vitro clinic's killing of their frozen human embryos.

Last year, Cook County Circuit Judge Jeffrey Lawrence refused to dismiss a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Alison Miller and Todd Parrish against the Center for Human Reproduction, which mistakenly destroyed the couple's embryos nearly seven years ago. Miller and Parish stored nine embryos at the Center in January 2000, and were told that one of these looked promising; however, six months later the couple learned that their embryos had been discarded.

The couple's wrongful death claims had been rejected by previous courts, but Lawrence's ruling reversed those decisions. The fertility clinic then appealed the judge's decision to allow the lawsuit to proceed.

On November 17, a coalition of nine Illinois and national pro-life organizations filed friend-of-the-court briefs in the case in support of the parents. Comprising the coalition are Illinois Citizens for Life, Concerned Women for America, the Illinois Right to Life Committee, Life Advocacy Resource Project, Illinois Federation for Right to Life, Concerned Christian Americans, the Illinois Family Institute, Lutherans for Life, Inc., and the Catholic Conference Center of Illinois. The case is now pending before the Illinois appellate court.

Paul Linton is special counsel for the Thomas More Society of Chicago, which is representing the pro-life coalition. He says the trial judge was correct in concluding that the embryos were human beings under the state's wrongful death statute and should be protected by the law in the event of their destruction.

"Of course," Linton points out, "we want to maintain the standard that human life begins at conception -- understood as fertilization -- and not at a later stage of development, for example, where there is implantation."

The Center for Human Reproduction and the American Civil Liberties Union claim the wrongful death statute does not apply in this case, and that there is, therefore, no cause of action. However, the trial judge declared in his ruling that "there is no doubt in the mind of the Illinois legislature when life begins. It begins at conception."

The location of this suit is significant, Linton notes. "There are a handful of states – maybe seven or eight states -- that do not have any type of gestational requirements for wrongful death suits involving unborn children," he explains. "Illinois, however, is the only state where, in their wrongful death statute, they not only eliminate any gestational requirements, but also any developmental requirements," the attorney observes.

Thomas Brejcha, president and chief counsel for the Thomas More Society, told LifeNews.com in a statement that this wrongful death case is "the modern equivalent to Dred Scott in a petri dish." His remark refers to the 1857 U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared black slaves and slave descendents to be non-citizens who, as such, had no rights or protection under the law.

The crucial question in the present-day case, Brejcha contends, is whether the pre-implanted embryo is to be considered a human being or personal property. He says the Thomas More Society is in "full agreement" with Judge Lawrence that human life begins at conception and should be protected, and that the plaintiffs have the same right to seek compensation as any other parents whose child has been killed.

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