Legal Rights for Embryos?

Attorney and reproductive rights expert Jessica Arons has written a compelling analysis of a bizarre piece of legislation granting individual rights to embryos. According to Arons, "The state of Louisiana has assigned to human embryos a legal identity with rights that can be litigated in court—regardless of whether the embryo is in a Petri dish in a lab or in a womb, so long as rights have attach[ed] to an unborn child. The statutes go on to provide the fertilized ovum with an entitlement to sue or be sued. The implication of this provision is that an embryo should be thought of as a child. But embryos and children are patently not the same and the law should not treat them as such." The article is published in the Center for American Progress ’ exciting new science policy journal called Science Progress . You can read the complete article here .