The Alabama Supreme Court today denied a rehearing request on its most controversial ruling of the year, which granted frozen embryos the status of unborn children under state law.

In its ruling on James LePage, et al. v. The Center for Reproductive Medicine and Mobile Infirmary Association, the court held that frozen embryos should be considered as living beings, allowing for in vitro fertilization clinicsx to be held liable for the accidental loss of embryos under Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Law.

Several IVF clinics in Alabama suspended operations following the ruling.

While the request for a rehearing on the case was denied, two justices dissented: Justice Greg Cook and Justice Will Sellers.

Sellers wrote a dissenting opinion that noted the unintended consequences of the court’s ruling in the case earlier this year.

“This case has removed us from any notion of ivory-tower isolation and has subjected us to the scrutiny of world opinion, thrusting us into a public discussion that was as unwarranted as it was unanticipated,” Sellers wrote.

“While many of our opinions have unintended consequences, oftentimes such consequences nevertheless are foreseeable because our decisions impact others who, although they were not parties to the case, were generally aware of the potential repercussions of a reasonable decision. In this case, our decision was a surprise, if not a shock, to our citizens.

“The majority opinion on original submission had significant and sweeping implications for individuals who were entirely unassociated with the parties in the case. Many of those individuals had no reason to believe that a legal and routine medical procedure would be delayed, much less denied, as a result of this Court’s opinion.”

Sellers noted the case’s effect on others not involved in the case, writing that he “would have granted the request to conduct oral argument on the applications for rehearing, including providing …. an opportunity to voice their concerns, to explain the legal bases of their positions, and to highlight the various loose ends left dangling by this Court’s opinion.”

Not doing so, Sellers argued, left those affected by the original ruling with no legal recourse.

“Because those individuals never had an opportunity to submit briefs in this case to explain their positions and the law supporting them, they now have a new regime that has been forced upon them for which they had neither input, nor redress, nor a hearing,” he wrote.

“The majority opinion on original submission also addressed issues and arguments that were never raised in the parties’ initial briefs and never argued by the parties.”