An Ohio lawyer, representing a couple that lost three frozen embryos in a fertility clinic storage tank malfunction, is asking a court to clarify when life begins.
Bruce Taubman is scheduled to appear before a three-judge panel in the 8th Ohio District Court of Appeals to argue on behalf of his clients Wendy and Rick Penniman. The Pennimans, of suburban Cleveland, were among the more than 950 families affected by the tank failure last March at Cleveland’s University Hospitals Fertility Clinic. That malfunction caused the temperature to rise, destroying more than 4,000 eggs and embryos.
“The key question we want to be answered is: when does life begin?” Taubman wrote in a blog post last April. “The Pennimans believe that life begins at conception, and that means that their embryos that were destroyed by UH (University Hospitals), are, in fact, people. However, the decision must be based on law, not emotion.”
Seeking a legal declaration that life begins at conception, Taubman sought a declaratory judgment from the court, which would allow the embryos to be treated as persons and former patients, not property, under Ohio law.
“If the legal status of embryos is not declared to be that of a person, the Plaintiffs will not be able to bring a cause of action for wrongful death and will not be able to seek relief for the mental anguish incurred by the Plaintiffs as surviving parents,” Taubman wrote in his original complaint last year.
Attorneys representing University Hospitals filed a motion to dismiss the case, which was granted by the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas last year. Taubman filed an appeal, which prompted Wednesday’s hearing.
“This Court must hold that an embryo that has not been implanted into the uterus does not constitute a ‘distinct human entity’ and thus is not entitled under the law of Ohio to the rights and protections of a person,” Judge Stuart Friedman wrote in his opinion.
Parents “may believe that the embryos thus created are already persons — but that is a matter of faith or of their personal beliefs, not of science and not of law,” continued Friedman, who retired from the trial court in early January. And while they may “feel the anguish of a parent who has lost a child … the court can deal only with rights and obligations that the law recognizes, not with emotions, feelings, or beliefs of individuals.”
