Is there any up-side to Alabama's crazy embryo ruling (which hit the logical conclusion to their arguments)
First the crazy: Alabama has been calling embryos and fetuses 'people' for a long time. The latest ruling says that even frozen embryos are 'people'. This ruling says:
“We believe that each human being, from the moment of conception, is made in the image of God, created by Him to reflect His likeness. It is as if the People of Alabama took what was spoken of the prophet Jeremiah and applied it to every unborn person in this state: ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, Before you were born I sanctified you.’ Jeremiah 1:5 (NKJV 1982)”.
USA Today points to Gorsuch as opening the gates to highly religious rulings:
The First Amendment's Establishment Clause typically limits the role religion can play in government, but the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 changed the longstanding process by which it reviewed conflicts between government and religion. The decision to change that process was written by Justice Gorsuch, who said the court needed to rely more heavily on "reference to historical practices and understandings." Parker, the Alabama judge, specifically referenced Gorsuch in his concurrent opinion.
Slate points out that by the Court's own logic, both the 'parents' and the clinic should be charged with murder (as well as the person who actually dropped the embryos).
Perhaps it is a good thing that the whole nation now has a reason to take a long hard look at what it means to be a 'person'. I've seen studies saying anywhere from 20%-60% of all pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion; most before the woman realizes she is pregnant. This paper says maybe as low as 10%, but only if you aren't paying attention: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5741961/
The spontaneous miscarriage rate varies between from 10% to 20% where 10% refers to late recognition of pregnancy and 20% refers to research involving routinely testing for pregnancy before 4 weeks or 4 weeks after the last menstrual period
Per Alabama, is God that invested in killing 'unborn' 'people'? Given how likely it is for an embryo to naturally abort, can we ever claim "beyond reasonable doubt" that a pregnancy was ever viable?
If we try to define when life begins, the Religious Right is sure to get deference. Look at how they've put "heartbeat bills" in place for embryos that don't HAVE HEARTS! Personally, I don't think setting a time constraint should be involved in defining life, but we're here to chat and discuss.
Lastly, CNN offered an opinion that we could choose to be more like South Korea which ruled (as summarized in Op-Ed):
If embryonic or fetal life has value, the state shouldn’t start with criminalization. Instead, the government may have a constitutional obligation to advance its interest in protecting that life in ways that don’t limit reproductive liberty, by protecting pregnant workers, delivering better prenatal care or safe housing and reducing the rate of maternal mortality.
The extension of their arguments is firstly that women who wish to avoid the risk of being charged with manslaughter or murder in the wake of a miscarriage must abide by behavioural guidelines which are contrary to science. i.e., to rest indoors anytime she may be pregnant.
The intended effect being to remove women of childbearing age from the workplace & from public life.
Secondly: to severely undermine reproductive healthcare, such that clinics shut, specialists flee, research is stopped & general knowledge regarding reproductive health & access to care plummets.
The overarching ideology being the production of new labourers & to increase desperation, so that Capitalists can avail of ever-cheaper labour in order to lure factories to set up in the US. This is the endgame of "bringing back our jobs" + anti-abortion rhetoric.
Wait: didn't the price of labor drop when the majority of women stopped staying home and started full time employment? As I understand it, decreasing the workforce raises wages, which should keep factories from moving in.
Further, if you're going to put restrictions on me when I am or MIGHT be pregnant, I've got a massive incentive to get sterilized before I have to worry about that.
Not if their policies increase the rate of reproduction, no, or at least, not for some time, because they know that unwanted & unplanned pregnancies increase the desperation of the women, both in the immediate sense & in slashing the numbers of women who can access education > good employment > sufficient societal security to unionise.
They intend to make it ever harder for anyone, but especially women, to obtain sterilisation or other means of reducing risk of pregnancy. This is why they chase reproductive health in general, even things such as IVF.
You already know these people to be dangerous ideologues - I'd caution against underestimating them or their grotesque vision.
When trying to bring this sort of thing up with a mixed group of people, I use the term "Republican low-wage policies" to describe a whole set of policies, and now I'm going to have to add forced-births to the list. Decades ago, it was just an insistence on denying citizenship to migrant farm workers to suppress wages, then add to that 'no child left behind' making it harder to teach more to students that could achieve more, then the whole home-school/charter-school movement where funds that used to go to public schools getting split and diluted, and so on.
And yes, I can see how it'd be hard to get sterilized without the health care and career to provide and pay for it.