The divide illustrates growing #Republican tensions over the political cost of the “#personhood” movement to endow an [potentially nonviable] #embryo w/ #HumanRights, which has animated the debate around #IVF. #Medical societies define PREGNANCY [not a person] as starting once an embryo has implanted in the wall of the uterus. But #conservative#legislators say they believe life begins when eggs are fertilized — before pregnancy — & are conflating #BirthControl w/ #abortion. #law#BirthControl
As Greg Olear notes, many of us may look at the blastocyst in the test tube and have trouble seeing the baby in the test tube — looking at you, Alabama Supremes. But that does not stop Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society and Robert P. George, a hard-right Catholic closely aligned with Leo, from their determination to impose on all of us by force of law the assertion that a blastocyst is a person.
"Donald Trump’s new 'let the states decide' position on abortion rights is a ploy. The real plan being cooked up by the Leonard Leo crew is to have the Supreme Court rule 'that a fetus qualifies as a "person" under the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment,' which would make federal law the rightwing fairy tale that any abortion is equivalent to murder."
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.
The day the #Alabama SC released its #embryo decision & Parker’s concurrent ruling, the chief justice said in an online broadcast that “God created government” & that #Christians should take it back from the “possession” of others.
The comments came during an interview w/ #QAnon supporter #JohnnyEnlow, author of “The Seven Mountain Prophecy.” Enlow describes #TomParker as a “true pioneer” of the movement, while Parker thanked Enlow for promoting the #SevenMountainMandate.
There has been a steady stream of Alabama jokes for my entire 72 years here in Georgia.
With Tuberville and the Alabama Supreme Court setting the tone, no one has to go to the effort of writing them. They come as standard features. #Alabama#embryo
Souls are indivisible, and only death separates soul from body, right?
So if an #embryo acquires a #soul at the instant of conception, what about identical twins, formed when an embryo splits in two? Do they share a soul, or is one of them a soulless monster? OTOH, what about chimeras, formed when two embryos fuse, so that the resulting baby is a patchwork of cells from both? Two souls in one individual? Or what happens to the other soul?
This is a rendition of a 6-day-old chicken embryo. It's a model I made for a project for a client. I took it as a base for an animation of the development of a chicken embryo from first division to hatching. That will take some time though ;-)
> A research team [..] has created complete models of human embryos from stem cells cultured in the lab—and managed to grow them outside the womb up to day 14. As reported today in Nature, these synthetic #embryo models had all the structures and compartments characteristic of this stage, including the placenta, yolk sac, chorionic sac and other external tissues that ensure the models' dynamic and adequate growth. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-human-embryo-grown-stem-cells.html#stemcells