The View co-hosts debated the definition of human life regarding an embryo when discussion on the show arose about the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos are considered “children.”
Co-host Sunny Hostin shared her religious views about the use of in vitro fertilization, or IVF, on Tuesday, noting her own experience with the use of IVF and frozen embryos.
“My religious beliefs are that conception is the start of human life,” Hostin stated on the television panel. “As you all know, I went through five miscarriages before we turned to IVF. We went through three cycles of IVF, and I have two beautiful children as a result of it.”
She added, “We depleted our entire life savings. Each cycle was not covered [by insurance] at the time. It’s $30,000, and it was important enough for us. Now, we did do frozen embryos, but because we are Catholic, we knew that we couldn’t destroy the embryos because they are, in our view, children.”
“And we couldn’t just give them up for research because in our view, they were children, and so I feel responsible in the sense that we used every single embryo, and if every single embryo became a child, then we were going to take care of that child, and we don’t have any frozen embryos left. Thank God because I would probably have an extra baby,” Hostin said.
The Alabama Supreme Court ruling came about from a lawsuit brought by a group of IVF patients whose frozen embryos were destroyed in December 2020 when they were removed from a cryogenic storage unit and accidentally dropped on the ground.
The justices ruled that Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act allowed parents to sue over the death of a minor child, which “applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location.”
Co-host Sara Haines disagreed with Hostin: “If you put a little embryo out into the world, it’s not viable on any level, so I’m not criticizing your personal beliefs because I do believe people believe that. I believe this is a stretch to call this a minor because we talk about the viability of an actual baby, the embryo. They’re calling it a minor. We’re calling it a full-blown minor are not an embryo, not a fetus.”
“It’s an unborn child,” Hostin clapped back.
“Well, that’s where I differ,” Haines responded. “The whole miracle of life and religious argument for the very brilliance of science just doesn’t go together. This was not — yes, embryos, yes, fertilization, all of this stuff can happen naturally, it doesn’t here.”
She added, “They’re literally going after it with religion while science is what brought this here.”
Joy Behar argued that she worries about the case going further to the Supreme Court and that Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who is a professing Catholic, might be “hostile to IVF.”
Hostin reminded Behar that the justice’s Catholic views were “consistent” with the church’s views about life and abortion.
Behar argued that women are “in charge of their own body.”
Haines admitted that she was “not pro-life.”
Co-host Whoopi Goldberg then decided to declare to the audience, “There is no one at this table that is not pro-life.”
Haines then contradicted Goldberg in stating her belief that women have a “right to choose what a woman does with her body.”
Goldberg followed up with the argument that the people making the laws didn’t know IVF, but then she struggled to remember what “IVF” was called.
Hostin pushed back on The View co-hosts and reminded them about the central arguments of the court case.
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“What we are missing is that these people wanted these embryos,” she said. “And the embryos were destroyed. Imagine having gone through an IVF procedure and your—”
Goldberg interrupted, “I’m saying I don’t agree; wrongful death is a little stretch.”
