We have finally reached the logical conclusion of the belief that life begins at conception:
An embryo created through in-vitro fertilization (IVF) is a child protected by Alabama’s wrongful death act and the Alabama Constitution, the Alabama Supreme ruled on Friday.
....The Supreme Court held in a 7-2 decision that parents of frozen embryos killed at an IVF clinic when an intruder tampered with an IVF freezer may proceed with a wrongful death lawsuit against the clinic for alleged negligence.
Alabama Chief Justice Tom Parker explained in, um, a wide-ranging concurring opinion:
[The principle against killing] has deep roots that reach back to the creation of man "in the image of God." Genesis 1:27 (King James).... Man's creation in God's image is the basis of the general prohibition on the intentional taking of human life. See Genesis 9:6 (King James).... Finally, the doctrine of the sanctity of life is rooted in the Sixth Commandment: "You shall not murder." Exodus 20:13 (NKJV 1982).
....The theologically based view of the sanctity of life adopted by the People of Alabama encompasses the following: (1) God made every person in His image; (2) each person therefore has a value that far exceeds the ability of human beings to calculate; and (3) 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.
....Carving out an exception for the people in this case, small as they were, would be unacceptable to the People of this State, who have required us to treat every human being in accordance with the fear of a holy God who made them in His image.
Parker goes on to cite Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Rev. John Sutherland Bonnell, Glanville Williams, Petrus Van Mastricht,¹ John Calvin, and the book of Jeremiah. I have to say that even in Alabama I didn't realize judicial opinions could rely so explicitly on the endorsement of a particular strand of Christian theology. But I guess I know better now.
It's not clear what the practical implications are, aside from no one in Alabama ever being willing to perform IVF again. The potential cost is just too high. But would-be parents should feel free to come to California if they're tired of big government regulating valuable businesses out of existence and making their services unavailable to hardworking families.
¹In a footnote, Parker tells us:
Petrus Van Mastricht (1630-1706) was a Dutch Reformed theologian and professor at the University of Utrecht. He was a favorite of Jonathan Edwards, a leading minister in the First Great Awakening and later President of Princeton University. Edwards opined that, "for divinity in General, doctrine, Practice & Controversie; or as an [sic] universal system of divinity, [Van Mastrict's Theoretical-Practical Theology] is much better than … any other Book in the world, excepting the Bible."
Judge Parker might try adding the Constitution to his reading list
If you appreciate irony, you might note just a tad of it here, in that the theology of the Chief Justice of the Bible Commonwealth of Alabama is very much that of the Puritan ancestors of those despised Yankees who in 1865 so wantonly destroyed that idyllic Southern Way of Life he obviously aches to restore.
Says the state that just executed a man.
Ah but notice the favored translation of right wing evangelicals,not thou shall not kill but thou shall not murder. Implying Alabama killing people is a ok.
I always was taught that the original "translation" was you shall not kill. I guess if you feel you must kill, it must make them feel better to say "murder" instead of "kill".
I knew a couple from Sylacauga, Alabama. They always said, in many ways, that the best thing about Alabama was the car license plate holders that said, "At least we are not Mississippi", basically saying that they edged out their last place neighbor by one spot.
At first I thought t his had to be a joke, certainly was a Joke! But alas it is not....then I looked at this again...On the bright side, the clinic is only be charged with wrongful death, not murder....but that case is waiting among the good people of Alabama....what will be extra sweet will be a death sentence against someone in a clinic....thereby upholding the sanctity of life....lol
Best Wishes, Traveller
When a couple (usually a couple) achieves a successful pregnancy all the remaining fertilized eggs are disposed of. What else are they going to do with them? I don't personally have a problem with that at all, but I have been waiting for a long time for the pro-forced-birth crowd to suddenly decide that's murder.
No, they are generally held on to for years until they decide they are absolutely sure they do not want any more children.
In IVF, creation of the embryos is the expensive and more intrusive part. Couples do not want to repeat it.
Sure, and what happens after they decide they are absolutely sure they don't want any more children? The fertilized eggs are destroyed.
Usually that is the case. Under certain circumstances they can be donated or used for research. My point was that they are held until the couple decides they want no more children, not until the first successful pregnancy.
It’s also important to hold them because embryos from older parents are more genetically risky. It’s better to use those made when the partners were younger than make new ones.
Yes, I understand they are held until the parents no longer want them. My point was that when the parents no longer want them they are almost always destroyed. Is "used for research" any different from "destroyed" in the mind of an anti-choice zealot?
Many in to pro-life crowd have thought that for ages. That's one reason many of them have always disliked IVF. If they do use IVF, some commit to implanting all the embryos. The success rate is pretty low once you hit 40 anyway.
Exactly right.
Estimates very, but the number of people born through IVF range from 5 million to 10 million or more. One very special one is a member of my family.
If right-wingers shut down IVF, millions of future lives will be lost. Whatever you want to call it, there's nothing about that that is pro-life.
The noted leftie toonist from TX, now retired, penned a toon years back of an Alabama State trooper doing a traffic stop.
Trooper: Sir, I stopped you on suspicion of Impiety. I need you to step out of the car and recite the Athanasian Creed for me, please.
Driver thought balloon: Wow, I didn't even realize we'd crossed into Alabama...
LOL
IIRC, Alabama was not one of the Original 13 Colonies, nor was it a "voluntary add" in the mold of Vermont, Texas or California. That is, Alabama is entirely the Immaculate Conception of Congress and the Several States acting through it.
Alabama attempted to sever its relationship with the Several States, perhaps reading "Several" not as a counting value but rather a "state of being". That is, it was ok to "sever" the relationships among them.
The "Union" states were horrified by this, but I'm wondering if one hundred and fifty nine years of foot-dragging and jeering by 'Bamans, and the place generally being peopled by a polity of purest assholery, the "Union" states may have had a change of mind by now -- and certainly of "heart" -- when considering the "value proposition" of Alabama as one of the Lucky Fifty.
Now I realize that Alabama has sections of Very Important Interstate Highways (I-10, I-20, I-65 and I-85) passing across it, as well as stubs of a few other routes. It's a serious barrier to rail transport between states west of the Mississippi River and, say, the Ports of Charleston and Savannah. And it has an important facility for the shiny new US Space Force.
But sometimes a price must be paid for sanity and comity. Don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out, boys.
And "Welcome, intelligent Alabama women who want to leave."
Alabama, an entire state composed of Incel Men and Handmaidens. Sounds like PARADISE!
Not quite the ENTIRE state of Alabama. This guy seems reasonable.
https://twitter.com/nowthisimpact/status/1757971241959342238
So... when the zygote has been on ice for 18 years, can it vote? And... how?
If it is implanted and makes it through gestation, it will be born an adult.
No one ever imagined that republicans would go through with it. 😂
This is our problem. If you had said years ago that some state would ban it, people would have said you were being hysterical. Derangement syndrome.
How much farther will they go?
My bad. It’s not a ban. The ruling simply allows someone to sue a clinic for damages if their actions cause the loss of these critters.
But, as a practical matter, it is a ban on IVF for essentially the reasons that Kevin gives in the original post. Remember, according to Judge Parker fertilized eggs are essentially people and the clinic or hospital or wherever they are stored is responsible for keeping them safe and “alive” even against a criminal act of vandalism. And apparently in perpetuity, too. Nobody in his or her right mind would want to operate a business under those conditions.
I think it’s extremely likely that if the Republicans sweep the White House and congress in 2024, the court will be emboldened to overturn Griswold v. Connecticut and its progeny. Contraception, like is increasingly the case with abortion, will be reserved only for the Republican elites and the very rich.
https://www.statnews.com/2022/06/24/supreme-court-decision-suggests-the-legal-right-to-contraception-is-also-under-threat/
Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it; and this I know, my lords, that where laws end, tyranny begins.
--William Pitt
There are laws against the desecration of a deceased body or a grave--these laws that protect the embryo are not necessarily more absurd than those.
We have a lot of absurd laws..
Without laws against desecration of a body or a grave, there would be a lot more vandalism and grave robbing in cemeteries. Those laws aren’t absurd - they serve a purpose, namely, maintaining order in cemeteries which generally cannot afford 24hr security patrols since most of them lose money or barely break even on operating costs.
They aren’t as absurd as you think. Most malum in se prohibitions flow from very basic human feelings. Without prohibitions against murder, rape, and theft, it’s likely that humans would forever be in a state of nature unable to peacefully live with one another.
I understand that all malum in se laws in the West have their origins in religion. Nevertheless, the trend over the centuries has been to recognize that there is something fundamentally wrong and evil about the acts themselves quite independent of religious practices. This is the most explicit adoption of the religious beliefs of one Christian sect that I’ve ever seen in a judicial opinion. Even though I understand that it comes from a particularly conservative and primitive part of the country, it’s still very disturbing.
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Religion is often invoked to support such laws, but the real reason we have them is that nobody wants to be killed, raped or robbed, and most people are willing to forego the ability to inflict those things on others in exchange for being protected from having them inflicted on us. Religion really has nothing to do with it.
I am interested in the opinions of the plaintiffs. It seems they got way more than what they wanted in terms of punishment.
This is a creative way to ban IVF without banning IVF. It's similar to the Texas abortion lawsuits. Just make the risks of doing something legal too high!
Maybe blue states should try it. For example, make car makers liable if pedestrian deaths involve being run over instead of merely thrown by a vehicle. That would make it much riskier for companies to sell those giant trucks with the huge front grills.
I would settle for states simply making owning a gun or purchasing bullets liable for $10,000 bounty hunter lawsuits if the guns are fired within 5000ft of any human or human structure (home, business, etc). Second amendment says you can own a gun but says nothing about the legality of being able to fire it off. Make firing guns illegal and enforceable by millions of privately enacted ruinous lawsuits so SCOTUS can’t say that government banned them.
The Green Party put TFG in power and brought this about.
The "Concern Democrats" like Ezra Klein who go on and on about Biden's age are the new Green Party.
In 5 years, John Roberts will be the only "liberal" on SCOTUS. I hope all the "Biden must step down!" crowd will be happy.
So a vehicle carrying these frozen zygotes can use the carpool lane in Alabama?
They have carpools lanes in Alabama? Aren't they librul, Commie inventions forcing people to drive and sit together? Freedumb!!
A carpool in 'bama is a pond yore truck ends up in after a day of muddin'!
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When is Bama gonna outlaw spilling one's seed on the ground!!!!!????
God will make them pay for each sperm that can't be found.
I would bet that Parker's belief in the divinely-mandated sanctity of life doesn't stop him from upholding the death penalty... but who would bet against me?
They'd fall back on the "INNOCENT life" loophole. A convicted criminal, or a nationally-designated "enemy" is by definition not "innocent".
If "man" is "the image of Gawd", then what about women? ... Oh yeah...
I'm glad that he did this. He has teed it up for SCOTUS to knock it down as an unconstitutional establishment of religion. The problem for SCOTUS is if they do that, they would some how have to that anti-abortion statues are not also unconstituional establishment of religion. Let's face it, it has never been about protecting children and always been about punishing sinners.
I think this remark about the mid-century science fiction book for boys, Tom Swift, has parallels with religion and may explain the rise in non-belief:
As the Tom Swift series went on, the gadgetry became more and more implausible, and relied more on "mysterious" or "cosmic" forces that had the dark quality of magic about them. This was the outcome of trying to write a series of books about technological wonders in an age that was producing "for-real" scientific and technological wonders at an ever-accelerating clip. The desire to avoid "offending the known" is a problem in grown-up SF to this day, and accounts for the current fascination with fantasy. We now know way too much to postulate "mysterious forces" with a straight face—unless they turn up in an archaic Anglo-Saxon wilderness where all the weird people have Welsh names.
http://www.duntemann.com/tomswift.htm
(On the human level, advances in medical understanding gets us close to a Tinker-Toy view of what's happening inside. Hard to reconcile that with religion.)
It would seem there have been several Tom Swift series, beginning in 1910: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Swift
Here's the original of the genre,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Steam_Man_of_the_Prairies
and, more importantly,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Reade
Thanks for that link! As a contemporary of the post's author, I have just spent several very pleasant moments re-exploring one of my childhood "literary" delights.
I had 3 IVF babies in California (the 2nd and 3rd were twins) in first decade of the oughts. Everyone - my lawyer the egg donor agency, the surrogate agency, my fertility doctor - strongly advised we do everything in California. I flew the donor in from CT. The judge approving the paperwork that the surrogate relinquished any legal right over the babies, and I was the sole legal parent, pounded his gavel then asked me to come up and had his assistant take a picture of us, big smiles all around. Our obstetrician was a gay man who asked me, the 2nd time round, for advice about parenthood since he and his partner were planning to have a baby. In many ways CA is fantastic. (Now my kids are adolescents and I realize I should've told that obstetrician to keep his pants zipped.)
LOL!
Why isn't this kind of action by a judge illegal?
He abrogates the entirety of Constitutional law and the secular foundation of the Republic.
And after that it undermines any other ruling or decision he's been a party to. It would be wrong to give credence to the view of such a person in public life.
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Tom Parker has been a Christian activist here for decades, even before being elected to the Supreme Court and then Chief Justice.
From Wiki, all you really need to know:
A longtime ally and former aide of Roy Moore, whose candidacy for United States Senate was derailed following multiple allegations of romantically pursuing teenagers while an adult,[5] he is known for his conservative views.[2] He strongly opposes Roe v. Wade (calling it a "constitutional aberration") and has written a number of anti-abortion judicial opinions.[5] Parker opposes same-sex marriage and has criticized the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges.[3]
Chief Justice Tom can fill a library full of biblical and scholarly references, but the fact that he abides by the "Do as I say and not as I do" principle, thereby violating the "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you" principle, means that he doesn't know the first thing about Christianity.
"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean." - Matthew 23:27
"But would-be parents should feel free to come to California if they're tired of big government regulating valuable businesses out of existence and making their services unavailable to hardworking families."
As long as the business in question isn't "housing" or any other residence-based operation.
So how do they square this with military service and killing in combat, particularly in wars where we went to far away places to do our killing? Self-defense?
Or do those who die not count as people to them since they are of another color and faith?
The desire to weaponize women's healthcare against them isn't really about protecting embryos. It's about taking power away from them and calling them imbeciles who make bad decisions.
The Bible has an excellent metaphor for this, "a wolf in sheep's clothing."