A Chicago judge has given the green light to a couple to sue a fertility clinic for "wrongful death". The clinic discarded an embryo the couple hoped would one day become their child.
Many legal experts believe the ruling, issued last week by Judge Jeffrey Lawrence, will eventually be overturned.But the case has rekindled "right-to-life" arguments in the US about just where the line should be drawn in defining when an embryo becomes a living human being.
Any legal determination that embryos - or pre-embryos as they are called before they are implanted in the womb of a woman - are human beings could devastate the fertility industry. Clinics may become unwilling to run the risk of being held liable for wrongful death if embryo tissues perish.
James Costello, who represents the couple, Alison Miller and Todd Parrish, said the pair simply wanted some legal redress for their disappointment.
Judge Lawrence based his decision on the Wrongful Death Act of Illinois. He ruled that "a pre-embryo is a 'human being' within the ... Wrongful Death Act and that a claim lies for its wrongful destruction whether or not it is implanted in its mother's womb".
However, experts say he may not have understood the implications of his ruling.
"There are hundreds of thousands of embryos frozen in clinics," said John Mayoue, a family lawyer and ethics specialist.
"Are we then going to elevate those clinics to the status of an orphanage?"
