Alabama is using the notion that embryos are people to surveil and harass women
Alabama is using the notion that embryos are people to surveil and harass women
Even before the court ruled in favor of this vulgar fiction, state authorities relied on the concept to intimidate and jail women
Even before the court ruled in favor of this vulgar fiction, state authorities relied on the concept to intimidate and jail women
Something that’s important to remember about last week’s ruling by the Alabama supreme court, which held that frozen embryos were persons under state law, is that the very absurdity of the claim is itself a demonstration of power. That a frozen embryo – a microscopic bit of biological information that can’t even be called tissue, a flick laden with the hopes of aspiring parents but fulfilling none of them – is equivalent in any way to a child is the sort of thing you can only say if no one has the power to laugh at you. The Alabama supreme court is the final court of review in that state. It cannot be appealed. For the foreseeable future, frozen cells in Alabama have the same legal status there as you or I do. Is this an absurd elevation of the status of an embryo, or an obscene degradation of human beings? The answer, of course, is both.
No fucking shit, the whole point of all this backward crap coming from the inbreds is to oppress women and the middle/lower classes. Jesus fuck, can you people really not see through this?
62Oh they know. But remember:
The cruelty is the point.
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The ruling will get replaced by a new piece of legislation that "fixes" the loophole and re-legalizes IVF. Probably reasonable quickly. Even the lunatic fringe conservatives didn't intend to shut down IVF.
The real scandal here isn't even the chaos caused by the court going wild like this -- though that certainly is a scandal.
What we should be concerned about is the fact that a member of a fringe religious cult that actively believes in doing away with the separation of church and state (the Seven Mountain Mandate) is not just actively and enthusiastically legislating from the bench, but is citing actual religious principles and scriptures in his decisions. And nothing is being done about it.
This justice sincerely believes literal demons have infiltrated the government and need to be engaged in holy war. He's a fundamentalist zealot. He is violating his oath to the rule of law on a daily basis.
46The ruling will get replaced by a new piece of legislation that "fixes" the loophole and re-legalizes IVF. Probably reasonable quickly. Even the lunatic fringe conservatives didn't intend to shut down IVF.
I wouldn't be so sure on that. The "lunatic fringe", as you put it, has absolutely no problem sacrificing IVF on their altar. And even if the legislature passes a law to "patch" the issue, they know they have a sympathetic ear on the bench. They will have to challenge that law, and they know there will be at least one vote on the Alabama Supreme Court who will be sympathetic.
13Agreed. This was on someone’s list.
1
Well, this is what the people of Alabama wanted. They certainly haven't been voting pro-choice the past few decades. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
25Not all
3Yes, because when I said that, I meant every single person in Alabama. Of course that's the most natural reading of the comment.
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So Alabama... does the child tax credit kick in seven months early? What if I think I'm pregnant.
19I'm a 41yo cishet male in another country, but I'm pregnant in Alabama for tax reasons!
..is probably one of the weirdest strings of nonsense I've ever written 😄
5
Isn't that the entire point, really?
14It is humiliating to even have to say this: that women matter more than fetuses or embryos, that a frozen cell in a petri dish is not a human being, but we are. It is an absurdity to make this argument, an exhausting waste of our time, a degradation. That, too, is part of the point.
That conclusion seems like something a modern European would write, but the situation in the US is different. The problem is that there is a significant minority of people here whose religious views state precisely the opposite: that the fetus has a right to life that is equal to their mothers'. Perhaps even more so, since the mother has already lived a significant portion of their life, while new life deserves the same chance. This has been a part of Catholic doctrine forever, and we have a large minority of Catholics here. (Catholics who, as far as I can tell, are much, much more conservative than their counterparts elsewhere in the world.)
Protestants, historically, didn't agree with Catholics on this point. Until recently when Evangelical Protestants (a uniquely American phenomenon, as far as I can tell) realized how much money they could fundraise on it, and how it could lead to winning elections. So, combined, these two groups wield outsized political power. They are still a minority overall, but they have managed to mobilize their respective voting blocs and exert their political will in a manner that would have made the Pharisees that their Savior fought against proud. I don't think these groups realize whose side they are really on.
The US is supposed to be a country with inherent freedom of religious beliefs, so those deeply-held convictions can't simply be dismissed in the fashion the author does above. However, they are pushing the issue because it wins them political influence. And that's why it's so hard to counteract. Since it's, at its core, a religious belief, logical arguments can't be used against it.
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