Other justices on the court took a more expansive approach. One of them was Chief Justice Tom Parker, who is a major figure in the fetal personhood movement. ProPublica described him in 2014 as the Alabama judge who “has figured out how to dismantle Roe v. Wade.” Through his rulings and advocacy, he helped elevate the fetal personhood argument within conservative legal circles. In an unusual concurring opinion that was replete with biblical and Christian theological citations, he took a victory lap of sorts.
“A good judge follows the Constitution instead of policy, except when the Constitution itself commands the judge to follow a certain policy,” he wrote. “In these cases, that means upholding the sanctity of unborn life, including unborn life that exists outside the womb.” He added that the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act “recognizes that this is true of unborn human life no less than it is of all other human life—that even before birth, all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing His glory.” He denied that all IVF procedures would be banned but suggested that the state legislature could enact much greater restrictions on the process.
It’s worth noting that Alabama’s constitutional language, while rooted in the fetal personhood movement, is still a national outlier. Voters in other states have rejected similar efforts to recognize embryos as persons in recent years. In North Dakota, for example, voters rejected a fetal personhood measure in 2014 by a nearly two-to-one margin in the polls. Concerns about its effects on birth control measures, IVF procedures, and women who suffer miscarriages led a significant number of otherwise conservative voters to reject it.