"The anti-abortion movement is turning on Republican lawmakers who support bills to protect in vitro fertilization, accusing them of sanctioning murder.
As many politicians raced in recent weeks to get to the right side of public opinion on IVF, some of the country’s biggest and most influential anti-abortion groups are pushing back."
~ Megan Messerly and Alice Miranda Ollstein
Could not happen to a more desrving group of folks.
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.
I'm appalled that the state of Alabama is now choosing to place the lives of extrauterine children — babies in test tubes — at risk in this way, after having just reminded us that "unborn children who are not physically located ‘in utero'" — babies in test tubes — have full human status and full human rights.
You either believe this or you don't, and if you claim to believe it and premise law on it, there can be no exceptions. Life is life.
Please understand: I do not think that a zygote is a human person deserving full protection of the law for that reason.
I am simply pointing out that for a long time now, "pro-life" Republicans have claimed that they are defending a non-negotiable principle that a human person is present from the moment of conception, and have sought in every way to impose this religious belief on all of us by force of law.
And now we find they never believed what they were saying.
#Alabama Gov #KayIvey (R) on Wed signed a bill to protect providers & patients doing #IVF from #legal#liability if #embryos they create are damaged or destroyed, a move that comes weeks after a state Supreme Court ruling threatened the treatment’s use.
…The University of #Alabama at #Birmingham, which stopped treatments after the ruling, said…that it was“moving to promptly resume” treatments.
The #law also shields “manufacturers of goods used to facilitate” #IVF or the transport of #embryos from #criminal charges, but stops short of providing blanket #immunity for those companies. While the law provides #legal immunity for clinics providing IVF, it doesn’t stipulate whether #FrozenEmbryos are people, as the AL Supreme Court did. #SCOTUS#Dobbs
Doesn’t address personhood—“#Alabama lawmakers pass bill aimed at resuming #IVF treatment, but experts say it will take more to protect fertility services”
"IVF — the procedure and the debate around this latest case — shows the degree to which some combination of ignorance about reproductive processes, misogyny, and magical thinking nearly entirely shape the 'pro-life' dogma embraced by much of the GOP, and many of their voters, virtually none of whom actually believe a fertilized egg is the moral equivalent of a three-year-old, or should be legally treated as one."
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.”
From her starry-eyed "It's all about faith and family" piece lionizing Mike Johnson to this one giving right-wing Christian "pro-lifers" a big pass as they pretend that the Alabana Supremes' attack on IVF is not a direct expression of what those Christians have long said about abortion, Molly Hennessy-Fiske is carving out a disreputable niche for herself:
"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.
Peter Weber notes that what Alabama lawmkers are doing has Carmel Richardson at American Conservative unhappy.
Republicans are stomping on their "own party's triumph," she says — because Alabama and "divine law" correctly hold that "if you make legal persons, you have to treat them as legal persons in all cases, not just when it is convenient" politically.
#Alabama’s GOP-controlled House voted Thursday to give doctors who provide in-vitro fertilization civil and criminal immunity for any death or damage to embryos. #IVF
That's some platform, GOP Fascist Party: "NO SEX FOR PLEASURE!" Should garner a whole lotta votes.
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Via Adam Jentleson:
Highly influential heritage foundation, which would help staff & direct a future Trump admin, literally said that a key conserv policy goal is “ending recreational sex.” they said it, not me. IMO we should take them both seriously & literally
#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.