Davis v Davis

1246 Words5 Pages
The case of Davis v. Davis is a highly controversial case regarding the disposition of human embryos/entities after the failure of Junior Davis and Mary Sue Davis’s marriage. Instead of looking at the decisions made by the Judges in the different Courts, I am going to look into HOW the Judges/Justice came to their conclusions. In the cases of Junior L. Davis v. Mary Sue Davis v. Ray King, MD, d/b/a Fertility Center of East Tennessee, Judges Young and Franks did not epoché, or suspend their judgment in order to properly investigate all options; however, Justice Daughtry did epoché when taking the case under advisement. In the Circuit Court of Blount County, Tennessee, the Honorable W. Dale Young presided over the initial divorce proceedings between the Davis’s. Judge Young begins his written opinion by stating right off the bat that this case, “…is one of first impression,” meaning that it was a case unlike any other heard before. This fact alone should have cued him to step back, rethink his actions, and not immediately jump to the conclusions that this would be “just another divorce” with property and children. In this opinion the Judge also seems a bit more empathetic to Mrs. Davis’s plight of having to endure the psychological and physical trauma of IVF. He even states, “Mrs. Davis went through many painful, physically tiring, emotionally and mentally taxing procedures, both before the December 1988 events, and after those events.” Perhaps this is what leads to his decision to regard the “entities” as children. There were four expert witnesses that testified at the Trial. Drs. King, Shivers, and Professor John A. Robertson were of the conclusion that “…the entities are at a stage in development where they simply possess the potential for life.” However, Judge Young went with the one expert, Dr. Lejeune, who believed that there was no such word as
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