I was right there with you on the outrage, having read a few other articles on the subject. But a few details in this article made me look at the actual decision, and the specific outcome is much less obtuse than has been implied. Bad facts make bad law, as they say.

Basically two couples went through IVF, created embryos, and those embryos were frozen. Some other patient at the hospital gained access to the lab through an "unsecured" door, opened up the frozen storage container, pulled the embryos out, and promptly dropped them (extreme cold), destroying them. The plaintiffs are looking at the hospital for civil damages, due to the negligence of not securing the storage.

The court's decision seems like a straightforward application of how Alabama's constitution was previously amended regarding the unborn. Philosophically, I do not agree with that amendment - especially as its main aim is as a wedge for preventing straightforward women's medical care in favor of more lethal options.

But I've also got a hard time brushing aside these would-be parents' desire for accountability from the hospital for the deaths of what they had hoped would be their children. In this case the "rights of the unborn" and the rights and desires of the parents were aligned (rather than being in conflict as in most situations of this topic). The hospital should not be allowed to hide behind the standard disclaimers about medical outcomes not being assured, or the vanishing "market value" of tissue samples, to shirk basic responsibility that would have easily prevented the plaintiffs' horrible losses.

I do agree the implications of the decision being available as a precedent aren't great on a few fronts, but that responsibility rests on the constitutional amendment itself.