All About Personhood, the Concept at the Center of Alabama Ruling on Frozen Embryos

Personhood — the concept of granting legal rights to the unborn at conception or a couple of months after — is gaining new attention. The Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion gave new potency to state rules recognizing fetuses as people. Now, in an unprecedented court ruling, Alabama’s highest court said Feb. 16 that frozen embryos can be considered people under state law, putting into question the future of treatments such as in vitro fertilization in the state. Critics of so-called personhood laws worry that they will also be used to criminalize abortions — including the termination of pregnancies that threaten the mother’s life, miscarriages and some types of contraception.

Abortion bans clamp down on the practice, while personhood laws regulate pregnancy much more broadly. The latter grant a fetus, the developmental stage that begins eight weeks after conception, or a zygote or embryo, the two earlier stages, the same legal rights as a person, including the right to life.