#MarilynLands, a Dem who made #ReproductiveRights a centerpiece of her campaign in deeply #conservative#Alabama, won a special election to the Alabama Legislature.
Lands’ victory in the suburban district in the #DeepSouth state was celebrated by #Democrats who have attempted to portray the state #GOP as too extreme on #abortion & reproductive rights.
In his SOTU, President Joe Biden called out attacks on abortion and IVF. In the video linked below, Robert P. Jones notes that only 9% of Americans support a total ban on abortion. 64% say abortion should be legal in most or all cases. This is why Republicans want to hedge on what they have held up to now about IVF — which is a direct consequence of their insistence that a human person is present from the moment of conception.
"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.
"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."
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.
In addition to a 17th-century Dutch theologian (Petrus van Mastricht) and the King James bible, one of the authorities cited by Alabama chief justice Parker in his ruling on IVF is the medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas. Parker's ruling cites Aquinas six times.
As someone with an M.A. and Ph.D. in historical theology — from a Catholic university — I know a little about Aquinas. Here are some salient points:
#Alabama Lawmakers Move to Protect #IVF Treatments
A court ruling declaring frozen #embryos to be legally considered children has set off a scramble among leaders in both parties to preserve access to a crucial reproductive treatment.
#JimWright / #StoneKettle
wrote:
"If you're a #Republican in #Alabama, frozen eggs are way better than actual children.
They don't need food, or clothing, or a decent place to live, or education, or medical care, or clean #water or breathable #air, they don't talk back & you don't have to worry they might not believe in your religion or won't conform to your preacher man's idea of gender, sex, & identity.
Frozen #embryos are the perfect Republican."
A third #Alabama#IVF clinic has halted treatment as the fallout from last week’s state Supreme Court ruling that frozen #embryos are legally #children continues to disrupt IVF access across the state.
The Center for Reproductive Medicine in Mobile, 1 of just 7 IVF clinics statewide, announced Thurs that it had paused IVF procedures in light of the court ruling.
The court ruling by the all-#Republican justices held that the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act applied to all unborn children, without exceptions, & called frozen #embryos “extrauterine children.” The decision has alarmed #medical professionals & #ReproductiveRights advocates, who criticized it as being grounded in #religion & not #science.
What I missed at first, and then read somewhere, is that these are not #embryos, but zygotes. If the law really pertains to zygotes, women’s ovaries would be owned by the state, and getting a hysterectomy would be a criminal act. And can’t just bust on female zygotes: gotta clamp down on all those sperm swimming around. Not to mention the ones jettisoned into socks, and condoms, and random pies.
Frozen #embryos are children now in #Alabama. I used to get criticized for proposing the "ridiculous" hypothetical of if you had to choose, whether you'd save one crying baby or a thousand embryos. It has suddenly become law that you should obviously let the baby die.
Yeah we are worried! We extracted a number of eggs, which we then proceeded to #fertilize, grow #embryos, and pic the faster growing ones from. That's a standard procedure in #IVF. Unless you only got one or two eggs left, you pick from the best. Then you #freeze the rest for next time. Except now my #wife's #baby maker is broken and frankly we good with these. So what? We were paying $500 a year to keep the others #frozen for a few years. So then we stopped and now we are murderers in #Alabama?