The Alabama Chief Justice Who Invoked God in Deciding the Embryo Case

Chief Justice Tom Parker has long been revered by conservative groups as an architect for the overturning of Roe v. Wade.



Tom Parker announced his plans to run for chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court in Montgomery in 2006. Jamie Martin/Associated Press

By Rick Rojas
Reporting from Atlanta
Feb. 22, 2024
Updated 12:48 p.m. ET

In an Alabama Supreme Court decision that has rattled reproductive medicine across the country, a majority of the justices said the law was clear that frozen embryos should be considered children: “Unborn children are ‘children.’” ... But the court’s chief justice, Tom Parker, drew on more than the Constitution and legal precedent to explain his determination. .

“Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God,” he wrote in a concurring opinion that invoked the Book of Genesis and the prophet Jeremiah and quoted at length from the writings of 16th- and 17th-century theologians. ... “Even before birth,” he added, “all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.”

Read the Alabama Supreme Court’s Ruling

{snip}

The 8-to-1 decision last week by the justices, all of whom are Republicans, overturned a lower court’s ruling that frozen embryos were not considered children. The justices found that the couples could pursue a wrongful-death lawsuit against a Mobile fertility clinic over a 2020 episode in which a hospital patient removed frozen embryos from tanks of liquid nitrogen and dropped them on the floor.

{snip}

The majority, in its opinion, cited a 1872 statute that allows parents to sue over the wrongful death of a child and found that “unborn children,” including “extrauterine children,” were included in that. ... In his concurring opinion, Justice Parker reached further back, citing Genesis: “The principle itself — that human life is fundamentally distinct from other forms of life and cannot be taken intentionally without justification — has deep roots that reach back to the creation of man ‘in the image of God.’” ... It underscored the philosophy that has guided him through two decades on the court. ... “When judges don’t rule in the fear of the Lord, everything’s falling apart,” he once wrote, citing the Book of Psalms, according to the ProPublica investigation. “The whole world is coming unglued.”

Rick Rojas is a national correspondent covering the American South. He has been a staff reporter for The Times since 2014. More about Rick Rojas