Duties to the Unborn: Alabama Supreme Court Deems Viability Irrelevant to Fetal Wrongful-Death Actions

Jonathan Berry at The Federalist Society: April Mack sued to recover for the wrongful death of her unborn child, who miscarried after a car accident. The Alabama Supreme Court ultimately vindicated her right to recovery, despite her having miscarried her child before the point of viability. In order to do so, the court found that viability made no sense as a prerequisite to wrongful-death recovery, holding an unborn child’s gestational age irrelevant as a matter of law. Conspicuously, the court never saw fit to even mention the U.S. Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence and its treatment of viability.