A pair of bills in the Florida legislature seeks to provide legal protections for unborn persons. The legislation also defines who is considered an unborn person in Florida.
House Bill 1517 and its Senate companion, SB 1284, are known as the Civil Liability for the Wrongful Death of an Unborn Child bills. Both would extend provisions of personal injury laws to unborn fetuses, allowing surviving family members to seek compensation as a result of negligence.
But experts say that protections to the unborn and their families are only part of the goal; the bigger implication of the bill would be its legal recognition of what or who qualifies as an unborn person.
“This is an express effort to say, from the moment of conception, this is a human being, period,” said Jay Wolfson, a professor of health policy law at Stetson University.
According to both the House and Senate versions of the bill, an “unborn” person is defined as a member of the species homo-sapien in any stage of development who is carried in the womb.
Central Florida Public Media reached out for comment to the bills’ sponsors, Republican Rep. Sam Greco and Republican Sen. Erin Grall. Neither office responded.
A similar bill with the same title, HB 651, was crafted last year, but it died in the House on second reading shortly after a controversial ruling made by the Alabama Supreme Court, which declared that embryos created through in vitro fertilization (IVF) should be considered children.
The court ruled in favor of families seeking damages against an IVF clinic after a patient at the fertility clinic gained entry into a cryo-preservation storage area, opened a sub-freezing temperature unit, grabbed embryos, burned themselves, dropped the embryos, and destroyed them.
This year’s set of bills, if either pass, would allow survivors of the deceased, parents, and other family members to seek legal relief. The bill would protect mothers from wrongful action and healthcare providers in certain circumstances, as long as that provider is in compliance with the applicable standard of care, including care related to assisted reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization.
With regards to IVF, Wolfson thinks the bill is an attempt to follow the Alabama Supreme Court ruling.
“I think it's all in the same wavelength, and that wavelength is to broadcast the intention as a matter of public policy that viability begins at the moment of intention of conception,” Wolfson said.
The moment unfertilized embryos are stored for later use would be considered “unborn” because of the “intention” to create life.
“I'm putting my eggs in a freezer, okay? And therefore, those are intentionally, potentially viable humans. I'm pregnant. My intention is to create a viable human. That intention is spiritually, philosophically, and legally broadcast by the intentions of this law and what happened in Alabama,” Wolfson said.
According to Wolfson, the law would allow plaintiffs to ascribe liability to a “tortfeasor,” someone who is responsible for the harm caused, similarly to how a tortfeasor is named in personal injury law cases.
Plaintiffs would be able to seek financial damages in the value of the pain and suffering of the parents, as well as potential future earnings of the unborn, Wolfson said.
“We do have lots of models for determining future earnings of individuals based on their age, their socioeconomic status, the education that they have, the geographic area they live in,” Wolfson said.
However, experts debate the legitimacy of those models.
“Experts argue about it, and juries or courts make some decisions, but you don't know whether an unborn child who hasn't even come out of the womb yet, at six weeks, three weeks, at 12 weeks, if that child were they to be born, what would they become?” Wolfson said.
Wolfson’s last concern with the bill has to do with the “chilling effect” it could have on families with pregnancy complications seeking more children.
“If they have a pregnancy where it's very high risk, and they learn later on that there are significant congenital issues with the fetus, the uncertainties that this places on families and on the health care system and on the legal system are not inconsequential,” he said.
According to the Florida House of Representatives, the Senate version of the bill may not be moving forward, in favor of the House bill, which is set to receive a second reading by the House on Wednesday.
