The fertility clinic at the University of Alabama at Birmingham announced Wednesday it has stopped offering in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures. Other clinics in the state may soon follow after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled last week that frozen embryos are "children" — entitled to the same legal protections as an infant or a third grader.
We have legislators and judges making sweeping decisions for issues about which they are completely unqualified; women's healthcare, the physiological status of embryos and fetuses at their various stages of development, children's education. These people are not physicians or educators. They seem to be making things up as they gain more power. We are moving ever closer to Gilead and it's alarming.
So it’s an affront to God to destroy an embryo, but it’s just fine to make it easy to destroy those images of God once they become actual living children in a school shooting? The hypocrisy is extreme.
I have 5+ generations of family buried in Alabama. Mom left and never looked back, with good reason. I loathe these people with a red-hot rage.
"...human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself." But it's fine to let actual children get shredded by guns, drown at the border or get raped.
This effort has nothing to do with life. It's about control over women.
Again thanks for this information and analysis. A young newly credentialed MD looking for a location to practice and perhaps raise their own family will be giving Alabama a pass. Older doctors will shift into other areas of medical care. Some will leave. The “opera buffa” that is a large portion of the GOP will continue as long as they think this plays well with voters. The religious zealots are not representative of all Americans. Not even all church going Americans. Believe in a divine being if you choose but don’t jam it down everyone’s throats. As to organized religions they have discarded themselves in their willingness to embrace Trump in order to achieve their theological control of sex and reproductive health (w high in itself is very suspect). The constitution protects us with a guarantee of FREEDOM FROM RELIGION as well as. Look around at the conflicts. We identify people by their theological and religious beliefs.
Let's put aside the question of whether an embryo should be afforded the same personhood as an infant or even a fully-formed adult (I believe it should not, but it's a decidedly thorny issue). To those Alabama couples looking for help to conceive, what is the message? Sorry, it's "God's will" that you can't have a baby? It's as asinine as it is frightening.
This article is so well written and researched. Thank you once again for your amazing reporting. The details you have included have cleared up so much misinformation being spread by the misinformed AL Supreme Court.
Two areas of thought. First of all, although our "religious" "conservative" brothers and sisters like to blame their view of abortion on the Bible, the Bible itself makes it clear in the Genesis story of the creation of Adam that although Adam was a fully formed human being, he did not become "a living being" until God breathed God's Spirit into him with his first breath. Indeed, the Bible seems to indicate that although it is God's mechanisms that result in the physical creation of each person before birth, that person does not truly "live;" does not become a blip on God's figurative radar screen until they receive their portion of God's Spirit together with the air in first breath they draw.
The code of laws spelled out in Leviticus also specifies a much lighter punishment for the accidental death of a child than for that of an adult indicating that, in the view of our religious ancestors in ancient times even living children were not as fully human as adults. The same Levitical Code also specifies a religious rite wherein a woman who's husband suspects her of adultery can be given a potion to induce an abortion all of which is just to say that the Bible is NOT on the side of our "conservative" friends.
Second, the strong, unconscious attachment and attraction our "conservative" friends have to unborn fetuses, over and above every other form of humanity, actually results from a psychological dysfunction "groomed" into them as a side effect of their church's view of "original sin." In it's most virulent form, folks are beaten (verbally or physically) into believing that they have been infected by "original sin" as part of being born into the world. (It's almost as if these church leaders believe that, when God breathes God's Spirit into each child as they draw their first breath, they are cursed rather than blessed.)
Once the person is infected with original sin God loathes that individual under any and all circumstances simply for being a human in the world. It is only in being on the right side of "Jesus" (as their particular church sees him, which has precious little to do with what the Gospels depict), i.e. keeping church leaders happy with you, that you gain the benefit of having Jesus die for the sin of being human which infects everyone from the moment of their birth. Without the church, even if you're a miraculously amazing and wonderfully blameless person throughout your life, you'll still burn in hell because your "original sin," will not have been forgiven.
Being "groomed" into this perspective causes psychological damage. Those who deeply accept the church's teachings on "original sin," lose the aspect of their personality that allows them to experience and express their own essential goodness (no matter what you do, it's not good enough for God). In response, they unconsciously rip out of their own personalities, and lock away in internal exile, their ability to experience or express "The Innocent" (from Carol Pearson's book, "Awakening the Heroes Within.") This leaves them experiencing what is most commonly described as heartache - that chronic ache centered around your solar plexus described as "a broken heart" in so much of popular music.
The only relief for this particular form of heartache (there are many others, by the way) is to attach yourself to the only form of human life which still possesses the part of your personality that you lack - the only form of human which still possesses "innocence," i.e. unborn children to whom the most affected form massive attractions and attachments over and above their connection to any living human (who are regarded as essentially worthless and completely expendable).
In fact, in their church's view, ONLY "the unborn" are beautiful and pristine; the highest form of human life (except perhaps for Jesus, himself). Those babies who have already been born, by virtue of their infection with "original sin," are just schmucks like the rest of us, and, therefore, have little intrinsic value in and of themselves (contrary to the ways Jesus related to those around him).
This devotion to "the unborn," which did not previously exist, was created out of whole cloth by a coalition of "conservative" politicians and religious leaders somewhere around 1970 as a way to manipulate their followers into supporting politicians and political parties which would "protect the unborn," but also as a smokescreen to distract those followers as they did countless other things to which those churches and church members had always been opposed - as a way to gain political power and wealth for those "conservative" leaders and politicians, an effort which has been successful beyond their wildest dreams.
Only now as they pursue their devotion to "the unborn" to such a ridiculous and damaging extent as we now see in Georgia does the general population begin to see through their subterfuges, recognize their psychological sickness for what it is, and turn away from them and their churches back toward God who has been opposed to their lust for power and wealth all along as clearly shown by Jesus' rejection of those things during is 40 days in the wilderness.
None of this is to say that we should not love and support expectant mothers, nor that those mothers and family members should not dream about what that child, once born, might become, nor to say that those who lose wanted pregnancies do not go through considerable grief at the loss of those dreams, but only to keep these issues in a better perspective and clear away the smoke in order to look more honesty and with greater clarity at what "conservative" politicians and religious leaders have been doing while hiding behind it.
If they really believed in the arguments they’re presenting, why wasn’t the person that broke in & actually destroyed the embryos charged with multiple counts of murder?
When James Madison, a devout Episcopalian, wrote the First Amendment he was concerned not for the impact the church would have on the state, but the impact the state would have on the church. What we are seeing play out in real time in courts and legislatures across America is the perversion of religion in pursuit of an ideology. An ideology based on white male supremacy. The Alabama Supreme Court majority, especially the craven blasphemer CJ, don't care in the slightest about those embryos. They are pawns in their ongoing war on women and women's independence. If women have reproductive choice they have control over their lives in a way that women of earlier times would never know. And that is an anathema to the weak mediocre white men that push these laws and these rulings.
Perhaps this, and the inevitable fallout of this, ruling might wake enough Alabama voters who don't want to live in a dystopian Christo-fascist hellscape.
Parker is a Christian Nationalist type, as shown by his constant citing of the bible in this opinion. Ignores the separation of church and state, ignores the fact this country has multiple religions, and ignores that other religions have a distinctly different opinion of abortion and when life begins.
His 'opinion' should disqualify him from being a Justice. Extremist religious views have no place in our court system. Our founding fathers were clear about that. They knew the dangers.
Where are the anti-abortion women pleading to have these unwanted frozen children implanted in their wombs? If Alabama wants these embryos to thrive I expect the legislature will create a program that will pay all the expenses of having these frozen kids implanted into the huge number surrogate wombs on offer from anti-abortion women. Time to put their wombs up or shut up.
A heart transplant, kidney transplant could be viewed similarly in the religious mind of God's will when harvesting organs from a person declared brain dead or letting someone go by discontinuing life support ie Terry Schiavo
Alabama has a safe harbor law that allows an infant 45 days or younger to be left at a "baby drop" set up at a fire station or other medical facility. Perhaps people can leave cryogenic containers with embryos at a fire station. https://legiscan.com/AL/text/HB473/2023
Yes, it’s true, Imaginary Sky Daddy hates it when you destroy a microscopic organism, but he’s cool with killing kids as long as you do it with an AR, the Lord’s sacred instrument.
Meanwhile, it’s another touchdown for Jesus! Next up will be banning IVF nationally, and moving down the wish list to banning abortion, contraception, extramarital sex, impure thoughts and presumably women leaving the kitchen except to do the laundry.
I do wonder — did the lawyer advising this couple, who clearly wanted to use IVF to have children, point out that this tactic, if successful (which they clearly used solely as a cynical attempt to obtain punitive damages), would make it impossible for them, or any couple, to have a child via IVF in Alabama? Do you think they’re celebrating now? I guess the silver lining is fewer Alabamans. Still, truly baffling on every level.
A simple case of hospital negligence will lead to a future Supreme Court ruling agreeing with the AL religious fanatics and this will become the law of the land. Terrifying. But if the embryo is a person then what about social services and money for the parents while the child is in the womb? How will that work? This is a disgrace and it will become a huge mess
The fact that the spokesperson referred to this as a religious victory and something that God wanted tells you it is wrong. We are not a theocracy and shouldn't be held to someone else's religious beliefs. Religious freedom means we are each allowed to choose what we believe, not have religion forced upon us.
We have legislators and judges making sweeping decisions for issues about which they are completely unqualified; women's healthcare, the physiological status of embryos and fetuses at their various stages of development, children's education. These people are not physicians or educators. They seem to be making things up as they gain more power. We are moving ever closer to Gilead and it's alarming.
So it’s an affront to God to destroy an embryo, but it’s just fine to make it easy to destroy those images of God once they become actual living children in a school shooting? The hypocrisy is extreme.
I have 5+ generations of family buried in Alabama. Mom left and never looked back, with good reason. I loathe these people with a red-hot rage.
"...human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself." But it's fine to let actual children get shredded by guns, drown at the border or get raped.
This effort has nothing to do with life. It's about control over women.
Again thanks for this information and analysis. A young newly credentialed MD looking for a location to practice and perhaps raise their own family will be giving Alabama a pass. Older doctors will shift into other areas of medical care. Some will leave. The “opera buffa” that is a large portion of the GOP will continue as long as they think this plays well with voters. The religious zealots are not representative of all Americans. Not even all church going Americans. Believe in a divine being if you choose but don’t jam it down everyone’s throats. As to organized religions they have discarded themselves in their willingness to embrace Trump in order to achieve their theological control of sex and reproductive health (w high in itself is very suspect). The constitution protects us with a guarantee of FREEDOM FROM RELIGION as well as. Look around at the conflicts. We identify people by their theological and religious beliefs.
Let's put aside the question of whether an embryo should be afforded the same personhood as an infant or even a fully-formed adult (I believe it should not, but it's a decidedly thorny issue). To those Alabama couples looking for help to conceive, what is the message? Sorry, it's "God's will" that you can't have a baby? It's as asinine as it is frightening.
This article is so well written and researched. Thank you once again for your amazing reporting. The details you have included have cleared up so much misinformation being spread by the misinformed AL Supreme Court.
Two areas of thought. First of all, although our "religious" "conservative" brothers and sisters like to blame their view of abortion on the Bible, the Bible itself makes it clear in the Genesis story of the creation of Adam that although Adam was a fully formed human being, he did not become "a living being" until God breathed God's Spirit into him with his first breath. Indeed, the Bible seems to indicate that although it is God's mechanisms that result in the physical creation of each person before birth, that person does not truly "live;" does not become a blip on God's figurative radar screen until they receive their portion of God's Spirit together with the air in first breath they draw.
The code of laws spelled out in Leviticus also specifies a much lighter punishment for the accidental death of a child than for that of an adult indicating that, in the view of our religious ancestors in ancient times even living children were not as fully human as adults. The same Levitical Code also specifies a religious rite wherein a woman who's husband suspects her of adultery can be given a potion to induce an abortion all of which is just to say that the Bible is NOT on the side of our "conservative" friends.
Second, the strong, unconscious attachment and attraction our "conservative" friends have to unborn fetuses, over and above every other form of humanity, actually results from a psychological dysfunction "groomed" into them as a side effect of their church's view of "original sin." In it's most virulent form, folks are beaten (verbally or physically) into believing that they have been infected by "original sin" as part of being born into the world. (It's almost as if these church leaders believe that, when God breathes God's Spirit into each child as they draw their first breath, they are cursed rather than blessed.)
Once the person is infected with original sin God loathes that individual under any and all circumstances simply for being a human in the world. It is only in being on the right side of "Jesus" (as their particular church sees him, which has precious little to do with what the Gospels depict), i.e. keeping church leaders happy with you, that you gain the benefit of having Jesus die for the sin of being human which infects everyone from the moment of their birth. Without the church, even if you're a miraculously amazing and wonderfully blameless person throughout your life, you'll still burn in hell because your "original sin," will not have been forgiven.
Being "groomed" into this perspective causes psychological damage. Those who deeply accept the church's teachings on "original sin," lose the aspect of their personality that allows them to experience and express their own essential goodness (no matter what you do, it's not good enough for God). In response, they unconsciously rip out of their own personalities, and lock away in internal exile, their ability to experience or express "The Innocent" (from Carol Pearson's book, "Awakening the Heroes Within.") This leaves them experiencing what is most commonly described as heartache - that chronic ache centered around your solar plexus described as "a broken heart" in so much of popular music.
The only relief for this particular form of heartache (there are many others, by the way) is to attach yourself to the only form of human life which still possesses the part of your personality that you lack - the only form of human which still possesses "innocence," i.e. unborn children to whom the most affected form massive attractions and attachments over and above their connection to any living human (who are regarded as essentially worthless and completely expendable).
In fact, in their church's view, ONLY "the unborn" are beautiful and pristine; the highest form of human life (except perhaps for Jesus, himself). Those babies who have already been born, by virtue of their infection with "original sin," are just schmucks like the rest of us, and, therefore, have little intrinsic value in and of themselves (contrary to the ways Jesus related to those around him).
This devotion to "the unborn," which did not previously exist, was created out of whole cloth by a coalition of "conservative" politicians and religious leaders somewhere around 1970 as a way to manipulate their followers into supporting politicians and political parties which would "protect the unborn," but also as a smokescreen to distract those followers as they did countless other things to which those churches and church members had always been opposed - as a way to gain political power and wealth for those "conservative" leaders and politicians, an effort which has been successful beyond their wildest dreams.
Only now as they pursue their devotion to "the unborn" to such a ridiculous and damaging extent as we now see in Georgia does the general population begin to see through their subterfuges, recognize their psychological sickness for what it is, and turn away from them and their churches back toward God who has been opposed to their lust for power and wealth all along as clearly shown by Jesus' rejection of those things during is 40 days in the wilderness.
None of this is to say that we should not love and support expectant mothers, nor that those mothers and family members should not dream about what that child, once born, might become, nor to say that those who lose wanted pregnancies do not go through considerable grief at the loss of those dreams, but only to keep these issues in a better perspective and clear away the smoke in order to look more honesty and with greater clarity at what "conservative" politicians and religious leaders have been doing while hiding behind it.
If they really believed in the arguments they’re presenting, why wasn’t the person that broke in & actually destroyed the embryos charged with multiple counts of murder?
When James Madison, a devout Episcopalian, wrote the First Amendment he was concerned not for the impact the church would have on the state, but the impact the state would have on the church. What we are seeing play out in real time in courts and legislatures across America is the perversion of religion in pursuit of an ideology. An ideology based on white male supremacy. The Alabama Supreme Court majority, especially the craven blasphemer CJ, don't care in the slightest about those embryos. They are pawns in their ongoing war on women and women's independence. If women have reproductive choice they have control over their lives in a way that women of earlier times would never know. And that is an anathema to the weak mediocre white men that push these laws and these rulings.
Perhaps this, and the inevitable fallout of this, ruling might wake enough Alabama voters who don't want to live in a dystopian Christo-fascist hellscape.
Parker is a Christian Nationalist type, as shown by his constant citing of the bible in this opinion. Ignores the separation of church and state, ignores the fact this country has multiple religions, and ignores that other religions have a distinctly different opinion of abortion and when life begins.
His 'opinion' should disqualify him from being a Justice. Extremist religious views have no place in our court system. Our founding fathers were clear about that. They knew the dangers.
Where are the anti-abortion women pleading to have these unwanted frozen children implanted in their wombs? If Alabama wants these embryos to thrive I expect the legislature will create a program that will pay all the expenses of having these frozen kids implanted into the huge number surrogate wombs on offer from anti-abortion women. Time to put their wombs up or shut up.
A heart transplant, kidney transplant could be viewed similarly in the religious mind of God's will when harvesting organs from a person declared brain dead or letting someone go by discontinuing life support ie Terry Schiavo
Alabama has a safe harbor law that allows an infant 45 days or younger to be left at a "baby drop" set up at a fire station or other medical facility. Perhaps people can leave cryogenic containers with embryos at a fire station. https://legiscan.com/AL/text/HB473/2023
Yes, it’s true, Imaginary Sky Daddy hates it when you destroy a microscopic organism, but he’s cool with killing kids as long as you do it with an AR, the Lord’s sacred instrument.
Meanwhile, it’s another touchdown for Jesus! Next up will be banning IVF nationally, and moving down the wish list to banning abortion, contraception, extramarital sex, impure thoughts and presumably women leaving the kitchen except to do the laundry.
I do wonder — did the lawyer advising this couple, who clearly wanted to use IVF to have children, point out that this tactic, if successful (which they clearly used solely as a cynical attempt to obtain punitive damages), would make it impossible for them, or any couple, to have a child via IVF in Alabama? Do you think they’re celebrating now? I guess the silver lining is fewer Alabamans. Still, truly baffling on every level.
A simple case of hospital negligence will lead to a future Supreme Court ruling agreeing with the AL religious fanatics and this will become the law of the land. Terrifying. But if the embryo is a person then what about social services and money for the parents while the child is in the womb? How will that work? This is a disgrace and it will become a huge mess
The fact that the spokesperson referred to this as a religious victory and something that God wanted tells you it is wrong. We are not a theocracy and shouldn't be held to someone else's religious beliefs. Religious freedom means we are each allowed to choose what we believe, not have religion forced upon us.