"IVF is fundamentally at odds with the idea that life begins at conception. That’s not a trap that 'pro-life' Republicans are going to easily escape. And the more they try to have it both ways, the more everything they’re saying is revealed as nonsense."
~ Mark Sumner
It's almost as if IVF is a test-tube demonstration — so to speak — of the scientific fact that a clump of cells IS NOT a baby. And loudly claiming it's a baby doesn't work.
"Republicans have … marched in lockstep to oppose the Right to Contraception Act introduced by Democrats because it would have included methods, such as IUDs and the morning-after pill, that some consider abortifacients. It’s hard to square support for IVF, which, as practiced in the United States, nearly always entails the loss of fertilized eggs, with opposition to Plan B because it may result in the loss of a fertilized egg."
Andrew Egger on what happens when the dog (the "pro-life" GOP base) catches the car (the elusive GOP promise to end abortion):
"Before Dobbs, it was easy for the GOP to let the pro-life movement take the lead when it came to setting their abortion-policy agenda—after all, none of that policy was ever going to become law. Expect more and more daylight between party and movement in the months and years ahead."
"Before any of us get complacent by thinking, 'Oh, well, that’s Alabama. Predictable craziness,' there are similar laws ready to be passed in other states that want to advance Christianity as the unofficial religion of their state and the country. …
"This single court decision is the throwing down of the gauntlet challenging America to choose sides: Either American ideals as defined by the Constitution or membership in a Costco version of Christianity, packaged in bargain bulk and cheap homilies.
I choose to support the quality of life for all Americans without preference given to any religious dogma."
Jay Kuo notes that Republicans are madly trying to run from the Alabama theocrats' IVF ruling.
"But all their grand statements don’t change a key fact: The minute you declare—as the Alabama Supreme Court and 124 Republican co-sponsors of the Life at Conception Act did—that embryos are 'persons' under the law, you make IVF functionally impossible."
Making a dogmatic declaration that a human person is present the moment ovum and sperm unite locks those who promote this dogma into an inexorable logic that is on full display in the Alabama thoecrats' dogmatic ruling.
This is about dogma. You can arrive at this position only by dogmatic decree. What Republicans want to do is impose, by force of law, a religious dogmatic dictate held by some believers but by no means all, on the rest of us.
"Alabama Supreme Court chief justice Tom Parker was downright gleeful.
He quoted Genesis in his sermon — I’m sorry, his concurring opinion — in the Alabama ruling that turned in vitro fertilization on its head by defining frozen embryos as children.
He quoted 17th century Dutch theologian Petrus Van Mastricht."
"Ya know, good ole Van Mastricht. He quoted a 16th century Bible – because older is closer to God, maybe – and quoted the Sixth Commandment, thou shalt not kill.
He quoted Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin and one of Roy Moore’s old pals at the Foundation for Moral Law in Montgomery. He wrote of the 'wrath of God.' …
Make no mistake about it. Alabama is a theocracy."
And you, too, can be Alabama, the rest of America. Just keep voting Republican. Theocracy waits!
Charles Pierce on how the Republicans are scrambling like, well, eggs, after the Alabama supreme theocrats reminded them of their insistence that when ovum and sperm unite, a human person, a baby, is the immediate result:
"Chief Justice Tom Parker of the Alabama Soo-preme Court has placed a lot of important Republican asses on a very hot griddle."
"For decades, they placated the fanatic fetus-fondlers in their political base with half-measures and platitudes. Then the U.S. Supremes dropped the Dobbs decision into their laps and, suddenly, there was no place for them to hide any more. And now, while they're still wrongfooted from that development, here comes Chief Justice Tom ruling that all the little IVF embryos are babies beloved by God, to whose private cellphone number Chief Justice Tom has the number."
"He and the Almighty got together and decided that all IVF procedures are against the law in Alabama. IVF is a very popular thing. And Republicans are scrambling like...well...eggs over this new issue that they should've seen coming, but clearly didn't."
"Republicans desperately trying to cover their tracks are running the same play as the Supreme Court justices who lied about settled law to get confirmed so they could overturn Roe v. Wade."
"The Alabama decision is a direct result of the June 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, decided thanks to the three religious extremists former president Trump nominated to the Supreme Court. That decision referred to fetuses as 'unborn human being[s]' when it overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision recognizing the constitutional right to abortion."
"Republicans are now denying they intended to halt IVF with their antiabortion stance and their appointment of religious extremists to the courts. But that position doesn’t square with the fact that since the Dobbs decision, they have pressed for so-called personhood laws, laws that give the full rights of a person to an embryo from the time of conception."
"While it is the IVF story that has garnered the most attention this weekend—likely because it has obvious implications for the 2024 election and Republicans have tried to rush away from it—it is simply a different facet of a larger story: the leaders of the Republican Party are working to overthrow democracy."
"GOP Rep. Nancy Mace, a consistent supporter of Donald Trump, said Saturday, 'I will stop any and all efforts to ban IVF.' She was quickly hit with a community note from the social media network saying she 'sponsored HR1011, a bill that enshrines in law the same personhood from conception argument that was used to ban IVF in Alabama.'"
As Josh Marshall notes, when the … something … hit the fan with the Alabama supreme theocratic court ruling turning cells in test tubes into babies, Republicans began wildly back-pedaling on their life-begins-at-conception ideology.
They realize they are now in a vulnerable position after the Alabama theocrats unmasked them.
They realize they're in a precarious position after the Alabama theocrats effectively unmasked their life-begins-at-conception ideology for the dogmatic, dangerous nonsense it is.
So Senator Steve Daines, who heads the GOP Senate campaign committee, has put out a memo urging colleagues to support IVF.
"But Sen. Daines himself recently cosponsored (along with numerous Senate colleagues) a law based on precisely the same theory used by the Alabama court."
As Lucian K. Truscott says, the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that cells in a test tube are a baby and deserve the same rights that a baby has puts Republicans in a real bind.
It does so because it tells us that "pro-life" Republicans have not ever truly meant what they claim to believe, when they say that "life" begins at conception.
The logic of the Alabama court ruling is impeccable: if "life" begins at the moment of conception, as "pro-life" Republicans claim to believe, then from the moment ovum and sperm unite, a human being with full personal rights is present. So that the clump of cells in the test tube is a baby….
Obviously many people think this is a ridiculous way to understand the process of human reproduction and fetal development.
For many of us, it's patently absurd to maintain that the test tube contains a baby.
And now that the theocratic Alabama court decision, with its impeccable logic, has put the consequences of saying that the zygote is from the moment of conception a full human person right out on Front St., Republicans want to run from the position they have long defended and wanted to impose on the entire nation in the name of their peculiar religious beliefs.
"The days that Republicans could say they were pro-life and forget about the details are over. It turns out that being anti-abortion wasn’t about the fetus as much as it was about the votes. Today, the anti-abortion movement is all about trying to find a way through the minefield the issue has become for them. Laws about abortion in red states have turned into a pick-your-timeframe smorgasbord."