AUSTIN (LifeSiteNews) — The Texas Supreme Court may soon hear its own case considering the personhood of frozen embryos created through in vitro fertilization (IVF), guaranteeing a controversy that establishment politicians wanted to sweep out of public view will only continue until it is resolved.

The Texas Tribune reports that the Lone Star State’s highest court is considering whether to take up a lawsuit stemming from how to distribute three frozen embryos created by divorcing couple Caroline and Gaby Antoun. The couple agreed in writing that the husband would get the embryos in the event of a divorce, but the wife contends that contract is no longer enforceable under Texas’s current abortion laws that recognize preborn babies as people.

The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, fully empowering Texas pro-life laws just five days before the start of the Antouns’ divorce trial.

“Now that Roe is no longer law, the Court has the opportunity to reclassify embryos as unborn children rather than property, and to, after far too long, recognize and protect the rights of those unborn children and their parents,” Caroline Antoun’s attorneys maintain.

“It’s a case where two people got together and were planning for their family, and they entered into an agreement,” responds Patrick Wright, who represents Gaby Antoun. “This is a family issue and if — and it’s a big if — the courts are getting involved, they’d be doing essentially the thing that has been complained about for years, which is adding something that’s not there.”

The Texas Supreme Court has not guaranteed it will take the case, but if it does it will be the second of its kind in 2024, following the Alabama Supreme Court’s February ruling that frozen embryos are children under the law and that their accidental destruction can be grounds for wrongful death lawsuits.

It remains to be seen how Texas lawmakers will react to both the policy and political fallout of a similar outcome. In Alabama, Attorney General Steve Marshall soon confirmed he had no intention of prosecuting IVF facilities based on the ruling, and the state quickly enacted a new law protecting the industry after national media pressure.

Nationally, many Republicans, including former President and 2024 GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, have rushed to declare their support for IVF, fearing the political ramifications of being branded as opposing the practice. Most recently, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), despite being regarded as one of the Senate’s most conservative members, joined forces with Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) to propose legislation that would protect IVF nationwide by denying Medicaid funds to any state that prohibits it.

The IVF process entails the conscious creation of scores of “excess” embryonic human children only to be killed and human lives being treated like commodities to be bartered over. It has been estimated that more than a million embryos are frozen in storage in the United States following IVF, and that as many as 93% of all embryos created through IVF are eventually destroyed.

A 2019 NBC News profile of Florida IVF practitioner Craig Sweet acknowledged that his practice has discarded or abandoned approximately a third of the embryos it places in cold storage.

U.S. Reps. Josh Brecheen (R-OK), Andrew Clyde (R-GA), and Matthew Rosendale (R-MT) recently sent a letter to U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) Director Mandy Cohen seeking answers about the IVF industry’s lack of transparency and oversight in the United States.