On February 16, 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court issued a decision in the LePage v. Mobile Infirmary Clinic case. The ruling has placed a threatening cloud of legal uncertainty over in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments in Alabama by equating a frozen embryo to a living child. This has prompted the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital to pause IVF treatment altogether, pending further review of the court’s ruling.
In support of their position, the court invoked the Bible, recruiting verses such as Genesis 1:27, Genesis 9:6, Exodus 20:13 and Jeremiah 1:5 in an attempt to bolster their judgment with Christian scripture.
As a lifelong Baptist pastor, I have also read the Bible.
The passage cited by the court from the first chapter of Genesis is neither history nor science. It is, instead, part of the inspired and inspiring creation poetry of post-exilic Israel. To recruit it into the service of this judicial decision is to misuse it.
The verse from Jeremiah, which speaks of God knowing Jeremiah “before he was born,” presents a beautiful, lyrical metaphor for God’s call to Jeremiah to serve as God’s prophet. It is not a Biblical endorsement of a misguided twenty-first-century culture-war agenda.
If the Alabama Supreme Court believes the government should exercise control over families that hope to have a child and also over the physicians who are trying to help them, then they should just say so. If they believe that the court has the right to reach into the most intimate dimensions of human hope, life and love, then they should say that is well.
If they believe there is no distinction to be made between a living, breathing child and an embryo, then they should say so.
But to enlist the Bible in support of such judicial activism is to send the Bible on an errand the Bible was not written to run.
After 45 years of pastoral life, during which he served churches in Georgia, North Carolina,Washington DC, and Jackson,Mississippi, Poole retired in 2022. He is the author of eight books, including The Path to Depth (Nurturing Faith Books, 2022), as well as numerous published articles and the lyrics to three hymns.
