Alabama Supreme Court Rules Unborn Baby is a Person - Veronica Neffinger ChristianHeadlines.com

Alabama Supreme Court Rules Unborn Baby is a Person

Veronica Neffinger | Editor, ChristianHeadlines.com | Tuesday, January 03, 2017

The Alabama Supreme Court has ruled that a wrongful death lawsuit brought by a woman 

who claims her doctor caused her to have a miscarriage by administering an abortion-inducing 

drug can proceed.

Kimberly Stinnett’s usual doctor was reportedly out the day of her appointment. Karla Kennedy, 

the doctor who was filling in that day, believed that Stinnett had an ectopic pregnancy since she 

had had one previously. Thus, Kennedy decided to administer methotrexate, a drug that, as the 

court noted, is “intended to cause the end of the pregnancy.”

However, when Stinnett’s usual doctor, William Huggins, examined her pregnancy via 

ultrasound, he found that Stinnett did not have an ectopic pregnancy after all, but instead 

had a normal intrauterine pregnancy. He said that Stinnett’s pregnancy was now doomed 

to fail, however, quite possibly from the methotrexate.

A few weeks later, as predicted, Stinnett suffered a miscarriage. She then took her case 

against Kennedy to court, alleging that the doctor had unnecessarily ended a viable pregnancy.

The initial court dismissed the case, but when Stinnett appealed her case to the Alabama 

Supreme Court, it was ruled that her case stands and must be heard in the lower court.

The court’s decision to allow Stinnett’s case to proceed has significant implications for 

the pro-life movement since they based their decision on the belief that Kennedy had 

possibly contributed o a homicide--meaning that Stinnett’s unborn baby was a person and 

not simply a fetus.

“The use of the viability standard established in Roe [Roe v. Wade] is incoherent as it 

relates to wrongful-death law because, among other reasons, life begins at the moment of 

conception. The fact that life begins at conception is beyond refutation,” wrote Judge 

Thomas Parker.

“Members of the judicial branch of Alabama should do all within their power to dutifully 

ensure that the laws of Alabama are applied equally to protect the most vulnerable members 

of our society, both born and unborn,” Parker added.

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