“Alabama’s highest court ruled frozen embryos are people,” blared a Reuters headline. CNN claimed that “the reversal of Roe v. Wade” led to this Alabama decision. Neither assertion is true. Media reporting on court decisions is hit or miss on a good day, but adding a dose of reproductive politics creates the feeding frenzy we see today. Let’s sort it out.

Every state has one or more statutes that allow civil suits for damages in cases of “wrongful death,” that is, when someone causes the death of an individual related to the plaintiff. Perhaps the most famous wrongful death lawsuit followed O.J. Simpson’s acquittal on criminal charges in the death of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. The victims’ families sued and, in February 1997, a jury found Simpson liable for the deaths and awarded millions in damages.

In more than 40 states, parents can sue for the wrongful death of an unborn child, and 15 of those states allow suits from conception. Alabama is one of them. A statute enacted in 1872 allows the father or mother to sue when “the death of a minor child is caused by the wrongful, omission, or negligence of any person.”

In this case, three married couples conceived children through in vitro fertilization (IVF). Some of the embryos were implanted in the mother’s wombs, leading to the birth of healthy babies, and others were preserved in a frozen state. The IVF clinic was in the same building as a local hospital and a patient was able to enter the clinic and IVF freezer, handling but dropping and destroying these couples’ frozen embryos. They sued the clinic and the hospital, alleging that their negligence allowed this to happen.

>>> Why the IVF Industry Must Be Regulated

Whether the courts could even consider the lawsuit, however, depended first on the meaning of “minor child” in the wrongful death statute. After all, the first baby conceived through IVF would not be born for nearly a century.

Old statutes, however, can be used to decide modern cases. Judges first interpret the statute, that is, they figure out what the legislature meant by the text it enacted. That meaning does not change until the legislature changes it. Judges then apply that meaning to the facts of new cases, as the Alabama Supreme Court did here.

The court had already interpreted the term “minor child” to include “any unborn child” from conception: “Here, the text of the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act is sweeping and unqualified. It applies to all children, born and unborn, without limitation.” Whether an unborn child is killed inside or outside the womb, therefore, is irrelevant. The lawsuit could proceed.

The court, therefore, provided a specific answer to a narrow legal question. It did not say that frozen embryos are children in general, and said nothing at all about them being “persons,” a term that does not appear in the wrongful death statute at all. The court said only that a frozen embryo is a “minor child” for purposes of the Alabama wrongful death lawsuit. Nothing more.

Statutes in other states use different terms, interpreted by those states’ courts. This case raised no constitutional issues whatsoever; the Alabama Supreme Court, after all, decided that “minor child” includes the unborn from conception a decade before the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade.

>>> In Vitro Fertilization: How to Talk About the Alabama Court Decision

This much is obvious from the court’s written opinion, but that has not stopped the media, politicians, and activists from trying to turn it into something else. It’s an attack on IVF technology itself, they cry, or could have revolutionary ripple effects. If they haven’t actually read the opinion, they’re speaking from ignorance, but if they have, these claims are clearly an intentional effort to mislead the public to advance a broader agenda.

This case has, however, put the spotlight on IVF technology and practices. Many people may not know, for example, that many IVF clinics intentionally create a surplus of embryos to find the best genetic profile and destroy the rest. People may not know that destroying embryos is not necessary for IVF success and that some states and foreign countries actually have standards that limit or prohibit such practices.

Nearly 40 states make “fetal homicide,” or causing the death of an unborn child without the mother’s consent, a crime. As this case shows, causing the death of an unborn can be the basis for civil lawsuits. Yet causing the death of an unborn child by abortion is legal is more than half of the United States.

Courts must do their job of settling legal disputes by interpreting and applying the law and it is critical to tell the truth about what our courts actually decide. But the American people and our elected legislators must tackle the moral and policy issues that some of these court decisions raise.