The Washington Post reports today on the latest in fertility treatments:
Red-state Christian women are rising up, speaking out to defend IVF
A typical example is Sara, who was angered by a viral Twitter post from a Christian influencer who condemned IVF:
“Show others love, grace and sympathy rather than judgment,” Sara wrote back online. “I would encourage you to not only educate yourself further but to truly put yourself in a fertility patients shoes. This is not a road taken by choice and comes with great emotional struggle and stress.”
....“They were attacking my faith. It bothered me to the core,” said Sara, a Southern Baptist who identifies as pro-life. “Because I had never viewed [IVF] as wrong, as anything other than beautiful and bringing another life into the world. … I’ve actually had a lot of friends pray for me and encourage me and help me along in the process.”
It's telling that Sara defends herself by noting her "great emotional struggle." I wonder if these pro-life Christians ever accept that as justification for abortion?
Probably not. In any case, their logic is approximately this:
- IVF inherently involves the destruction of fertilized embryos.
- But I want/need IVF.
- Therefore those embryos aren't human life.
It's human nature to reason this way—so human that I can barely even criticize it. It's just a damn shame they can't find the empathy to reason the same way when it's someone else who's in trouble.
"It's just a damn shame they can't find the empathy to reason the same way when it's someone else who's in trouble."
This is key to the whole question. If such people do get in trouble they use the same logic to justify their or their loved one's abortion while still proclaiming to be "pro life".
"IVF inherently involves the destruction of fertilized embryos."
So does natural conception as a nonzero fraction of fertilized eggs fail to implant. So there is no reason to single out IVF.
bingo
According to New Scientist, "For women in their early 20s, 50 per cent of pregnancies end in miscarriage; in their early 40s, it is 80 per cent." So if you believe in a God that has anything to do with human affairs, then God is the greatest abortionist around. If you also believe that abortion is murder, then God is, by far, the greatest murderer of all time.
Yup.
Yes, though a significant fraction of early miscarriages aren't even recognized as such.
This is a deeply stupid argument. Human beings die of natural causes all the time. The doesn't mean that it is okay to deliberately go out and shoot someone.
If embryos constitute human life and enjoy the legal protections thereof, the natural miscarriages that happen don't change that deliberately destroying one is murder. This is just another idiot dodge used by people who want to avoid the obvious outcomes of their beliefs.
"Natural miscarriages."
The greatest abortionist in the world is God himself.
EDIT: Posted this and then saw that Matt above said the same thing. Great minds . . . .
You're right. A much better argument is that you can't force me to sustain your life against my will. Even if I had a rare blood type and I was the only human on earth who could save you, you can't force me to give you my blood. In fact, I could stab you, and you could be bleeding out completely due to my actions, and I STILL have bodily autonomy to refuse to give you my special and rare blood. So why does a blastocyst have more rights than you do? In fact, if I was then hit by a car and became brain dead and they were about to pull the plug, you STILL can't take my blood if I'm not a donor.
My bodily autonomy outranks any other human's right to use my body to stay alive. Period.
It's the religious wackos who just want to punish women for being sluts and think that making them give birth is the correct punishment. Because they are weird and fascist and should never be listened to about anything, ever.
"... deliberately destroying one is murder. .."
Something is not murder unless the law says it is murder. If people don't think that killing an embryo should be treated as murder and if as a result the law doesn't treat it as murder then it isn't murder.
The AL Supreme Court just said killing an embryo is murder, therefore it is murder in that state.
You might want to find a different argument. This one isn't going to swing the fundies at all.
There is no argument that will swing the fundies, it is an article of faith. I suspect most of them don't have a problem exempting IVF as it isn't the result of sin which deep down inside is what they are really against. The object is to use the law to punish sinners (but only the woman, of course), the zygotes were always pretty much irrelevant.
"... I suspect most of them don't have a problem exempting IVF as it isn't the result of sin .."
More like IVF allows women to have children they would not otherwise have. Whereas abortion prevents women from having children they would otherwise have.
"The AL Supreme Court just said killing an embryo is murder, therefore it is murder in that state."
I don't think that is what they actually said.
But a miscarriage would be probable cause for an investigation into murder. Isn’t a dead body always a cause for investigation?
Let's try a thought experiment. Let's pretend for a moment that we, either individually or as a society, actually believed that a zygote is fully human, with everything that entails. How would we respond? Here's an easy one:
Would we routinely throw dead babies out in the trash without a moment's thought? Only if we were monsters. Would we devote massive funding to prevent, or at least reduce, this carnage? Or would we quietly ignore the issue? It depends on whether we are monsters. But of course no one, including you, actually believe this. It is a game of pretend, only taken to the extent that there is political advantage to be gained.
I can find room to both sympathize and criticize.
Sympathize because it is a huge deal.
Criticize because — let’s be blunt — the inability to sympathize is a sign one is a self-centered prick. Or at least has a tendency towards that end.
Christ would puke if he came back and saw the lack of sympathy demonstrated by many “Christians”.
They are Christianists. It's all form and no substance, like Islamist terrorists, who most certainly are not Islamic.
And the religiosity is PART of the self-centeredness. It's all appearance and focus on appearance -- to others and to oneself -- rather than honest identity. And they (increasingly desperately) seek the company and approval of others, who typically are in the same situation.
It's not Christianity; it's not even religion. It's a cult.
Exactly. The sort of thing Jesus criticized the pharisees for.
Ayup.
These are the same people that want a rapist who bilked thousands out of millions back in the White House, because straight, white male “Christian” supremacy and tax cuts (along with destroying the planet for short-term profit).
" . . . the inability to sympathize is a sign one is a self-centered prick."
Let's be blunt. My inability to sympathize with Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Kim Jung Un doesn't make me a prick, it makes me a moral person.
The Alabama Supreme Court has done a great public service. In questioning IVF on the basis of church doctrine they violate common sense and the separation of church and state. Rational folks, even republicans, are pushing back and in doing so confirm that the only unarguable point where life begins is when a fetus is viable outside the uterus. Any point in gestation before that is arbitrary.
What a colossal waste of time thanks to our religiously biased, politicized and ethically compromised U.S. Supreme Court
The Alabama Supreme Court did not base their decision on church doctrine, but rather the 2018 amendment to the Alabama State Constitution. That the State Constitution has been amended to conform to church doctrine is a different problem.
This is why I'm just slightly reluctant to criticize that god-bothering judge on the AL Supreme Court who wrote the ruling effectively banning IVF. If you begin with his (clearly ludicrous) premises, then the ruling is utterly rational. If life begins at fertilization, then embryos are human, and any process that destroys embryos is wrong. Since most IVF treatments involve destroying embryos, banning IVF is a no-brainer. Pretty much what Andrew Sullivan used to call "the brutal logic of fundamentalism".
This judge, for all his flaws, is at least consistent. The people who I absolutely despise are those who say "life begins at conception" but are now tripping over themselves to defend IVF. Utter hypocrites, worthy of nothing but scorn.
This is precisely the value of that judge's opinion: he's forced people like this woman to confront a fact about her procedure that she's evidently managed to ignore or put out of her mind up to this point, because she has to in order to get through her day and tuck her kid in at night. It's brutal that way. Logical consistency can be like that.
People say they want bright lines, that it's right and necessary to see the world in black and white. But most of us actually want to live in the gray areas in between, the areas that aren't completely consistent, like she wants to do.
If this quandary can teach her and others like her to let themselves *and others* live in the gray areas and not force all of us to abide by their or the judge's or anyone else's black vs white distinctions, we'll be a better country. I wish I could be hopeful about that.
And why aren’t they frying women who seek abortions in the electric chair? They’re murderers, right?
This judge might actually favor that. The brutal logic of fundamentalism.
The language used for this whole discussion is too mushy, too fuzzy, too imprecise and ambiguous. To wit:
* "Life" - well, come on, people. Your very blood is "alive", but who do you sue for murder if you get a scratch? Do you rush every last drop to the ER?? For that matter, every last sperm wriggler is "alive". And so is your dog and the fleas who live thereon.
* "Human" - the blood argument still applies. Ditto for chunks of skin, organs, and the like. But not the dog or its fleas. The sperm wrigglers are genetically human, but not a viable human. Not that this matters, apparently.
* "Person" - now we're getting somewhere. When is "personhood" conferred? It isn't so much a biological question as a legal one. And, to some who just don't get the Constitution, a religious one. That judge whose whole rationale was based on the old testament ought to be disbarred.
Yes, it is "personhood" that is the important question.
The problem with that is that once you think like that, birth is obviously the starting point, which is why almost all of humanity always start counting from birth, inlcuding the US. For example, it is where you are born that determine your right to citizanship, not where you were concieved.
So "pro-life" people cannot use "personhood", and need to go around it.
And personhood itself is a vague concept. A non-quite born baby isn't really much less of a person than a newborn, and a newborn is much less of a person than a four year old.
Again, though, legal personhood makes only a few distinctions. Live birth immediately confers a limited set of rights; attainment of adulthood a further set ...
infertility specific distress (ISD)
Not only are they desperate, they have a mental illness now. Kind of like gender distress. 😂
"I wonder if these pro-life Christians ever accept that as justification for abortion?"
Yes, of course, when it's them that needs the abortion. Happens all the time: people who work in abortion clinics all have stories about pro-lifers who've picketed their clinics one week and then come in as patients the next, always with their reasons why it's okay for *them*.
This is a tough subject
On one hand you have the Christian core belief in "family" - on the other you have the core belief that you should not take another "life".
To me, anything that would help a couple bring another life into this world should be worthy of consideration between the couple! (and no one else)
As Amanda Marcotte says, the exceptions are rape, incest, and me.
What still boggles my mind is not the audacity of these people to say they know the "mind of the Creator of the universe," but thay they expect me to believe them.
The final stance of the GOP will be:
IVF should be illegal except in cases of rape or incest.
"This is not a road taken by choice..." If she/they truly followed this sentiment an awful lot of "conservatism" would self-destruct pretty quickly.
“This is not a road taken by choice.”
I was FORCED to murder babies to have one of my own!!
(Hey, lady—did it ever dawn on you that God DIDN’T WANT you to have children? Because you’re really fucked up?)
That's the problem; you need empathy, but empathy is higher on the left side of the political divide than on the right.
The basis of claims of hypocrisy across a wide swath of issues comes down to people having to deal with their cognitive dissonance. How do I, a far-right conservative, resolve this cognitive dissonance of claiming life begins at fertilization but IVF is different? Demand that you should empathize with me, the person who wants IVF, and not fidelity to our dogma.
The one consistency of American politics is how inconsistent people's views are on different issues. Twas always thus.
Human reasoning is a combination of nature and nurture. Human reasoning is a combination of selfish and selfless. So, is selfish reasoning nature or nurture? And is selfless reasoning nature or nurture? Any assumption is a testable hypothesis.
The point is that if, as is implied, we are selfish by nature, then there's nothing to do short of altering our DNA. But if our nature is to be selfless, and we're teaching ourselves how to be selfish, then all we need to do is stop. My assumption: all we need to do is stop being selfish.
For the record, Jesus didn't say control your neighbor when your neighbor does something you've unilaterally decided is wrong, or allow your neighbor to get away with doing whatever they want. He told us to care about each other as much as we care about ourselves. In other words, all we need to do is stop being selfish.
You do realize that there are very few extant red-letter Christians, right?
And they obviously don't treat the "Old Testament" as having been superseded by the newer one, as a reading of Isaiah supposedly indicates. The teachings of Yeshua mean very little to these folks, & it causes them absolutely NO shame, or we wouldn't even need to think about trump.
But it appears that most if the fanatics violate the basic premise of their professes faith, not to mention several of the ten commandments, daily.
For decades now, I've thought that the most fundamental characteristic of being a conservative is a total lack of empathy with anyone whom you don't have personal experience with.
You're correct. I grew up surrounded by conservatives. I love them dearly, and they love me; but they cannot see through another's eyes.
Define conservative.
An empathetic person understands that words have be more than a way of separating "us" from "them".
My definition of a conservative is an empathetic person that is openminded and skeptical, but more skeptical than openminded, and a progressive is an empathetic person that is openminded and skeptical, but more openminded than skeptical.
Based on that definition, we need a lot of people on both sides to become progressives and conservatives.
Empathy is in the eye of the beholder. Do they seem empathetic to each other? Do they say "progressives lack empathy" to each other?
To me, it's simple. "That's not how I think, but let's talk about it," is empathetic, progressive, conservative, and wise. "You're wrong, and this conversation is over," is not-empathetic, cynical, naïve, and willfully ignorant.
Time was "Twelve Angry Men" nailed it. The Henry Fonda character and the E.G. Marshall character neatly summed it up: rational, thoughtful men with different points on the reason/empathy scale, but both open to argument and willing to change their minds.
It still does, but now the Marshall character is a RINO and the party's standard bearer is Ed Begley.
It’s not hard to distinguish the two morally. It resolves around consent, which in the case of minors flows through parents. Parents are generally allowed to consent to anything beneficial or neutral for the child, with some pretty fuzzy fuzz around the neutrality point.
It is very easy to believe it is moral for parents to consent to IVF as a package deal on behalf of their potential children, even if part of the package includes being discarded, because it’s all upside the potential children.
Abortion, in contrast, is not obvious under this Rawlsian framework. One might believe the world to be a better place with abortion allowed, but the downside risk of being aborted before you get there is very large.
I'm not seeing the difference from a rawlsian perspective between a discarded zygote and an aborted zygote.
You are not taking your original position far enough back. From the perspective of gametes (and primordial souls), IVF is great and abortion an obstacle to your chance to live.
I'm afraid we are getting into "Every sperm is sacred" territory here but I get your point however IVF is only good from the perspective of the gamete than wins the lottery and is successfully implanted. Given that most of these folks couldn't give a rat's ass about actual children (other than their own) I'm still convinced that the program is primarily about punishing sinners.
Hum. This argument is flawed. You have the right to consent to send your kid to swimming lesson because you think it is good for the kid. Can you consent to destroy one embryo (clearly a minor) just because you choose to?
Amen
I would guess reasoning would be "I'm trying to bring forth more life not end it"
Conservatives think both undifferentiated cells the size of the head of a pin, and corporations are people, but people aren't.
It must be the lack of self-awareness they relate to.
This.
"In 1979, McDonald’s introduced the Happy Meal.
Sometime after that, it was decided that the Bible teaches that human life begins at conception."
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/02/18/the-biblical-view-thats-younger-than-the-happy-meal/
>>>>It's human nature to reason this way
Yes that is normal but it is not normal to reason it away while you force the majority to live under the rule of law driven by your blatant hypocrisy.