Supporting life at conception is quite a strong principle, but it's basically the only one Republicans have re caring for all kids etc. Supporting an exception in the case of #IVF throws that out the window. And that's awesome.
Cause everyone cares about babies and kids and old people and poor people and veterans and immigrants too. Everyone also just cares about other things, and honest adults recognize compromise is always necessary. Demand politicians do that instead of just grandstanding.
Doesn’t address personhood—“#Alabama lawmakers pass bill aimed at resuming #IVF treatment, but experts say it will take more to protect fertility services”
Jill Filipovic on what the right-wing war against abortion (and IVF) is all about: control of women by men, to uphold patriarchal arrangements of society:
“It is this to which the far right objects. Their ideal society is one in which men are in charge and women are dependent on them — and that does require that sex remain risky, that pregnancy be risky, that women have fewer options and fewer freedoms."
"It’s not that these folks want women to live shorter, less-healthy lives, or that they want more children to die before their fifth birthday; it’s that women living shorter, less-healthy lives and a higher proportion of dead kids is simply an acceptable cost in exchange for the larger goal of restoring the patriarchal order.”
With the #Alabama#IVF ruling, didn't their population increase? Did they gain a Congressional seat and electoral vote? Maybe a few bucks in federal aid?
"Few Republicans have opined on whether discarding leftover embryos is illegal or immoral — or whether there should be federal protections for IVF.
One explanation for the silence: 125 House Republicans, including Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), co-sponsored a bill last year declaring that life begins at 'the moment of fertilization.'"
~ Zachary Basu
You can't have it both ways, once you say a "baby" is present at the moment of conception.
"Despite lip service claiming they support IVF, Senate Republicans refused to give unanimous consent to a bill proposed by Senator Tammy Duckworth to protect IVF. See WaPo, Senate Republican blocks bill to protect IVF after Alabama ruling (Accessible to all.) …
The extreme positions adopted by the far-right religious fundamentalists are reaching their absurd logical conclusions…."
"I never thought I’d be grateful to the Alabama Supreme Court for anything, but now I am. With its decision deeming frozen embryos to be children under state law, that all-Republican court has done the impossible. It has awakened the American public, finally, to the peril of the theocratic future toward which the country has been hurtling."
As Republicans are now showing us, a full human person — a baby — is present from the moment ovum and sperm unite. But only sometimes. Only when it's convenient to hold that position.
The furor that the Alabama theocrats IVF ruling is causing has Republicans back-tracking, so that Alabama lawmakers are now passing a law which effectively means that when ovum and sperm unite, a baby is present — except in a test tube.
The AL #legislature voted Thurs to #protect#doctors doing IVF from #criminal or #civil#liability if #embryos they help to create are subsequently damaged or destroyed.
The fast action by both the House & Senate on bills to shield IVF came >2 wks after the state’s Supreme Court ruled that #FrozenEmbryos are people & that individuals could be liable for destroying them.
The unprecedented decision, which gave fertilized eggs the same protection as babies under the state’s #WrongfulDeath of a Minor Act, threw #IVF treatment in #Alabama into turmoil. W/in days, nearly every clinic in the state either suspended IVF or halted #embryo disposal. Some #women in the middle of treatment fled the state after securing care from out-of-state providers. Many others feared that their significant emotional, physical & financial investment in having a child would be for naught.
…The measures that passed almost unanimously in both #Alabama chambers Thurs afternoon provide #legal#immunity “for death or damage to an #embryo to any individual or entity when providing or receiving goods or services related to in vitro fertilization.”
They provoked heated, highly emotional debate about #women’s #ReproductiveRights & how the #state has defined when life begins, most recently in a 2018 constitutional amendment cited in the court ruling.
“What happens to those children that are left in that cold freezer, those babies?” asked Sen Bobby Singleton, the #Democratic min ldr. “Because that’s life.”
Sen Timothy Melson, a ret anesthesiologist who sponsored the bill, replied that #IVF doctors “frequently eliminate the ones that aren’t optimal.”
“That’s #abortion now!” Singleton shouted, noting that he’d heard from women… worried about being charged w/ #crimes
#Christofascist#Mississippi#Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith — who, during her 2018 senate campaign, stated she would "be in the front row" of a public hanging — has blocked a bill introduced by Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth that would have protected access to #IVF.