An adult human body has 30 trillion cells.

The embryo, or blastocyst, implanted for IVF six days after fertilization has around 300 cells, or .00000000001% of the number in an adult. Blastocysts measure .2 millimeter across.

All good to know, especially while considering Alabama Supreme Court decisions.

The court ruled in January 2023 that state appellate judges reviewing the trials of people sentenced to die by execution may stop looking for “plain errors” committed by lawyers and judges.

In that ruling and others, Alabama’s highest court has declared it legal to snuff a fully developed, conscious, living human in spite of mistakes.

Contrast that with the court’s ruling this week that embryos are people. The ruling stemmed from civil lawsuits after an IVF clinic accidentally thawed embryos frozen for later use.

The ruling repeatedly refers to frozen embryos as “children” – and to one using a name. Chief Justice Tom Parker, in a concurring opinion, declared them “sacred.”

Thirty trillion cells? A life unworthy. Just kill ’em.

Three hundred cells? A person, a child, a sacred life. Preserve them.

Judicial goofiness.

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Our confounding courts

Have you read the Constitution?

I was a wanted child

Let’s go old all the way

A condescending, gloating taunt

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An IVF primer