My wife and I had our son via IVF. We wanted every single one of our fertilized eggs to work, but they didn’t. We had one that did and we suffered every time one didn’t.
Fuck Alabama for adding on to the torment and emotional suffering families going through IVF and any kind of infertility suffer already. It’s just adding unspeakable cruelty again.
Then they should count as dependents, grant the parents tax breaks, be eligible for social benefits, receive child support payments, be counted as passengers when in mom driving in HOV lanes, etc.
I love how the chief justice cites his god as his legal argument. What a sham. The god of the Bible has, thus far, failed to prove its legitimacy in any context, especially regarding a secular legal system.
I heard this somewhere: “You’re in an IVF clinic. It’s on fire and you enter a burning room. On a table is a large cooler with 5 thousand fertilized eggs, and there’s also a crying, injured five-year-old girl in the room. Which one do you save? You can only save one.” The answer for most people is obviously the 5 year old and it’s not a hard choice.
In a concurring opinion, Chief Justice Tom Parker cited his religious beliefs and quoted the Bible to support the stance.
"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," Parker wrote. "Even before birth, all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory."
In the Alabama case, a hospital patient wandered through an unlocked door, removed frozen, preserved embryos from subzero storage and, suffering an ice burn, dropped the embryos, destroying them. Affected IVF patients filed wrongful-death lawsuits against the IVF clinic under the state's Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. The case was initially dismissed in a lower court, which ruled the embryos did not meet the definition of a child. But the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that "it applies to all children, born and unborn, without limitation." In a concurring opinion, Chief Justice Tom Parker cited his religious beliefs and quoted the Bible to support the stance.
Women of America. Get a freezer. Freeze your eggs and transport them home. On all future taxes claim them as dependents in perpetuity. Fuck these asshats. Game the system and make bank!
We had I think six eggs harvested and fertilized, of those I think two made it to blastocyst, meaning the cells doubled as they should by day five. The four that didn't double correctly were discarded. Did we commit 4 murders? Or does it not count if the embryo doesn't make it to blastocyst? We did genetic testing on the two that were fertilized, one is normal and the other came back with all manner of horrible deformities. We implanted the healthy one, and discarded the genetically abnormal one. I assume that was another murder. Should we have just stored it indefinitely? We would never use it, can't destroy it, so what do? What happens after we die?
I know the answer is probably it wasn't god's will for us to have kids, all IVF is evil, blah blah blah. It really freaks me out sometimes how much of the country is living in the 1600s.
Alabama? More like Talibana, a’ight? Being ruled by religious extremists - in the 21st (ce) century - blows my mind. Are people still that backwards? Apparently, yes. Nothing wrong with a bit of private faith in the sky man if it helps you in life… but to be a fundamentalist is unforgivable.
I recently read Neil Stephenson's book called "Fall", in which a significant chunk of the novel is set about 30 years in the future. At that point in time, large swathes of America are referred to as "Ameristan", because they are break-away territories ruled by evangelical warlords. It feels surprisingly prescient.
Not sure exactly what companies store these frozen embryos, but if the company closes or you pass. How are the embryos disposed of?
Does the company need to keep them frozen and alive indefinitely? Or is it murder if they are terminated by the company? What happens if the freezers/cooler breaks? Who is responsible for the now classified murder?
A group of Alabama residents decide to rob a bank. They put on their ski masks, grab their guns, run in, yell for everyone to get down and they start looking for the vault. They ransack every office, but all they find are some fancy coolers. Tired from the search and hot from wearing ski masks in Alabama, they open one of them up to find a bunch of cool refreshing yogurt. They drink it, cool off a bit, and then they go looking for the manager. They find this nice looking guy in a suit and tie:
"Hey, are you the manager of this bank?", they yell, pointing a gun at his face.
"Yes sir, I am", the guy is shaking and scared, but tries to keep calm.