Republicans have now had a full week to stick their fingers in the wind and decide how they're supposed to feel about Alabama's ruling that IVF embryos are God's children the same as the rest of us. But they still haven't figured it out. Donald Trump wrote a screeching post in favor of IVF today, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee quickly followed suit:
The messaging from the NRSC, contained in a memo obtained by The Washington Post, was accompanied by announcements from a rapidly growing number of GOP Senate candidates voicing support for IVF procedures, which the Alabama ruling threatens.
“When responding to the Alabama Supreme Court ruling, it is imperative that our candidates align with the public’s overwhelming support for IVF and fertility treatments,” NRSC Executive Director Jason Thielman wrote in a memo to “Senate Candidates” dated Friday.... “NRSC encourages Republican Senate candidates to clearly and concisely reject efforts by the government to restrict IVF,” he wrote.
I hardly need to point out that Republicans are desperately trying to tap dance around the question here. They obviously don't want to be on the wrong side of polls saying that Americans overwhelmingly support fertility treatments, but that's not enough. After all, no government is trying to restrict IVF. Nor is "support" for IVF at issue.
The sole question is whether an IVF embryo is considered a person. This has the effect of restricting access to IVF because it can turn negligence into murder. No one wants to take the risk of performing IVF if a wrong move means you could end up in court looking down the barrel of a wrongful death or manslaughter charge from an overzealous district attorney.
So the question for Republicans isn't whether they love IVF, it's whether they think life begins at conception, even if that life is being stored inside a hospital freezer at -320°F. The Alabama Supreme Court says yes. Nikki Haley says yes. The Catholic Church says yes. Many fundamentalist Christians say yes.
But the only way to support IVF is to say no. So what do Republicans say?
But what about how old Joe Biden is? Isn't he a day older than he was yesterday?
Can we get an update on this?
Yes - absolutely, the only story worth discussing!
Both Republicans and Democrats spend their time making up shit to slag Biden about.
National Unity!
Not even negligence: Any knowledge that an action would kill or injure 'a person' has criminal liability.
You can't sign that away, like you can for non-people.
Every IVF treatment or procedure causes the destruction of some number of embryos - from their creation, transport, moving from vial to vial, implanting them and then making sure one is a successful pregnancy.
Was about to day this. It goes well beyond negligence because part of the normal process of IVF involves the destruction of embryos.
The media (and you) are missing the most important point. Finally after over 2000 years of debate, the Alabama Republican Supreme Court has decided a fundamental philosophical question. The Egg came first.
😄😄😄
The chickens are certainly coming last.
And they're coming home to roost.
I was going to post something similar in another forum You're incorrect, though: the Alabama Supreme Court has decided that there's no difference between the egg and the chicken, even though it's very hard to whisk a chicken in a bowl.
Good one! Also, acorn == oak, though nobody ages whiskey in acorns, maybe the toxicity is a problem …
Let me bore you for a couple of hours with one of my monologues about acorns?
Oh, OK, then. Well, in a nutshell, they're an oak tree.
And that's the root of the distinction!
Maybe now we can get to the point where all media actually listens to what the Republicans say. They have been saying this for at least four decades.
Its time to stop being surprised. I understand why the mainstream media is surprised, until the Trump era ever statement by any politician of whatever party was treated as some sort of opening offer in a negotiation.
For the obvious reason that there was always the other side to negotiate with.
Trump just goes, "is my way or the highway."
And by telling 50% or more of the population to F -off you get predictable results. Although not particularly comforting since that means 40% of the population is perfectly fine screwing the other 60%, but there it is.
We could have spent a few decades point out that life does not begin at conception, but we did not.
I've never understood the logic of "life begins at conception." Are the sperm and egg not alive?
It is short for "the life of a biologically distinct and fully genetically human organism begins at conception". Except that that is not the moral issue. The question is when a human organism should gain full protection of the law.
... yes. Yes, they are. That's literally what is happening right now.
Judges are part of the government. That's where their power comes from. When you are actively trying to gain political power and use it to appoint judges who will then issue decisions like "embryos are people," that's the government trying to restrict IVF.
Not to mention the laws -- passed by solid Republican legislatures -- that said judges are supposedly enforcing. The Repubs dissing "the big bad old gummint taking your IVF away" are literally the ones who are responsible. Maybe not by directly "banning" IVF, but by making it too risky for would-be providers.
One hopes the media would call them on that. Failing that, the letters to the editor, op-eds, comment sections, angry calls to local infotainment outlets...
i'm not sure that that is the goal of the alabama supremes because after reading the decision, i'm not sure they know what they're talking about, what ivf is and the consequences of what they're doing. an embryo is the image of god?
they've already admitted that they don't support the extremist 'life begins at conception' position
even texas says a fertilized egg isn't a person since it allows abortions up until 6 weeks
but like a lot of republican positions, they just don't like saying it out loud since it pisses off the extremists in their base
so they'll clearly state they support ivf, but they'll never clearly state that they support destroying unwanted embryos
Even Texas ... not so much. See today's WaPo story about a girl who was suffering the early stages of fallopian rupture because of an ectopic implantation that several Texas ob-gyns refused to treat.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/23/texas-woman-ectopic-pregnancy-abortion/
Oops woman, she was 25. (Thought she was 16 for some reason...)
the article doesn't seem to clearly state how many weeks she was pregnant before getting the ectopic pregnancy diagnosis, but i'm guessing it was beyond the 6 week limit
that being said, the article says the law specifically covers ectopic pregnancies so not sure why they refused
maybe because the $10k bounty law allows anyone in texas to bring a lawsuit in abortion cases, so probably just easier for the hospital to say no and let some other hospital deal with the legal circus
the dr's involved sure don't seem to have provided much justification for denying the procedure, which definitely smells like the result of consulting with their lawyers
It’s because ultrasound images aren’t perfect. Even the last doctor she saw who actually performed the surgery said he was only 98% sure it was ectopic from the scans. Ectopic pregnancies - like lots of other birth problems, and like lots of other internal problems, eg tumors, cysts, etc. - can’t be ascertained 100% for sure as “benign” or “malignant” until the surgeon is literally opening you up or the part they remove is sent to a lab. And by that time, it’s often too late to not take it out - they aren’t going to dig around inside you, see you back up and repeat it all again after the labs come back.
So you gotta find a doctor willing to take a 2% chance that the surgery is going to bankrupt him/her and/or result in jail time, if it turns out that the pregnancy wasn’t ectopic, just flawed in some other way that the ectopic-only exception passed in September doesn’t allow for.
One hundred twenty-four Congresspersons, all of them Republicans, are cosponsors of the Life at Conception Act, H.R. 431
The act declares that a ‘human person’ exists from the moment of conception, however brought about, and states no exceptions.
Republicans are trying to be on both sides of the issue.
To paraphrase Desi Lydic on TDS last week, what the conservatives are really aiming for is "Life begins when you find your first cousin hot". After all, that boner was god-given, and part of His Plan.
Watch out for personhood bills. Alabama lawmakers are already threading the needle by proposing a definition that sets uterine implantation as the cut-off.
Is masturbation next? Half a human is better than no human. Vasectomies? Where's Salomon when you need him? Waiting to see how they tie this to the Lost Cause.
Pseudoscience "proving" that Blacks aren't human. That's what the South African National Party regime did, isn't it?
This is where women actually are advantaged over men since no sperms are harmed when they masturbate. Woohoo!
Trust me ... nothing men do will be penalized. (hmm -- that word...)
The judge said "Biblical Law", so I'd assume he's also prepared to ban "spilling your seed".
See Salamander above. Nothing men have been doing for millennia, including having full on sex with women and then vanishing afterwards leaving her to deal with any pregnancy alone, is going to be criminalized. At best, they might fine the man for abandoning his kids. Maybe. (White men certainly weren’t forced to pay for all the kids they fathered out of wedlock when the woman was enslaved or living on an Indian reservation or living in a village that the Us was occupying overseas or even was married to the man but it was prior to about 1970 and the husband simply moved to another state and left his pregnant wife behind… History is littered with lots of women who were stuck holding the bag/baby after the men they slept with vanished into thin air.)
The Southern Baptists exist because the antebellum South proved that the Bible justified slavery, and to abandon it was unGodly.
These people can convince themselves of anything.
I think it was Garry Wills who pointed out that in the 22 volumes of George Washington's papers, the words "Jesus Christ" appear nowhere. Like a good upper crust Virginian, he always attended divine services, but never partook of communion. When a new pastor asserted that it was the duty of all members, Washington stopped attending until there was a new man in the
pulpit. And there was, soon.
Similar well-attested anecdotes dot the lives of our most prominent founding fathers. Sorry, judge.
I'd like to thank this Alabama judge for creating this media s$%tstorm about embryos. Once he removes his head from his fundament, I will.
In the meantime, it's a jolly time to keep bringing up fetal personhood and its implications with whatever Republican candidate that's currently going on about the "sanctity of life."
"So, Representative _________, when do you think human life becomes sacred? And which ones aren't any more so that the state can kill them?"
The second question’s answer is obvious: humans can be killed whenever judges or cops say so.
So what do Republicans say?
Are you kidding? They say both yes and no. They are in favor of Life, you see -- why aren't you? And all this ee-leetist stuff about "has the effect" blah blah blah -- why can't you just say you love Life?!? Also Jesus, and Freedom? Really, I think it should be, what do you say? Instead of you just asking all these ee-leetist questions?
Yep, this isn't even difficult. Fertilized eggs conceived through sin are people, otherwise, they aren't. It has always been about punishing sinners, at least the jezebel side of the equation, and never about fetal heartbeats or any of that other crap.
This is where the core hypocrisy of the Religious Right hits the fan, they don’t actually believe what they say they do about life beginning at conception if it means actually taking it to its logical conclusions. It’s easy to say you are against abortion if bans never actually get implemented you get to be morally superior and never have to think through what life begins at conception actually means.
Yes, yes they can and they are.
Look at all the headlines saying they (now) support IVF. Nary a discussion of the gotcha embryo question.
yeah, i saw that; they're treating it as if they've always been against ivf and have now come to their senses so bonus points to the republicans
the press can't bothsides the embryo destruction issue so their editorial guidelines require them to give trump et al a free pass and bury the story over the weekend
I doubt repulsives realise that sex may cause pregnancy. That it takes an egg and a sperm. Best send them back to a biology or sex education class. And while they are at it, get their noses out of others, and especially women's business.
Sad that they are so concerned about eggs but not about the baby it produces and the mother who bore it. After birth they are on their own. Too weird.
What about all those sperm that are lying around in frozen containers???
This is a good development, as it demonstrates just how bizarre the idea fetal and embryonic personhood. The Alabama Supreme Court has taken us much further down the rabbit hole than anyone ever anticipated. In doing so, inevitably they will lead to realization of the utter absurdity of this position, as it generates a lot more questions than it answers.
Eventually, they will be screaming "Because!" to every question that comes up.
I disagree on one point: it is the Alabama legislature that got us here. The theocratic judge’s obscene ruling sadly hewed pretty closely to theocratic and obscene Alabama law and constitutional provisions. The defendants were fundamentally asking for an IVF exception to the laws on the books.
"The Alabama Supreme Court says yes. Nikki Haley says yes. The Catholic Church says yes. Many fundamentalist Christians say yes."
Translation: Wannabe authoritarian autocrats say yes. People who act like real human beings say no.
I'll give Pope Francis a pass. My guess: it's a middle management issue.
It’s definitely a middle management issue in the Catholic Church. I don’t think any recent pope - maybe the nazi one? - wants “fighting abortion” to be the biggest thing their parishioners are doing. It’s all the kiddie-fucking priests and the bishops who turn a blind eye to all the kiddie-fucking going on around them that are obsessed with making abortion a shiny object to keep the faithful from questioning all the kiddie-fucking.
How far down the rabbit hole are the thugs going? Will they demand a murder investigation for each missed period? They did propose a vaginal sonogram for pregnant women. I can see that they will want a medical device that detects conception and reports via wifi to law enforcement. You know all women are sluts.
Hoist by their own test tube harness!
On the other hand, women can "bank" a whole lot of fertilized eggs on ice and write them off as 10, 20, heck 50 dependents for tax purposes! Pull out those applications for Social Security numbers, ladies!
Oh, wait -- the form asks "Date of Birth." Like that's somehow a criterion for being a "person".
Only if she has a cryogenic freezer at home. You generally have to reside with your dependents to claim them.
Not if you're paying for where they're residing.
"But the only way to support IVF is to say no. So what do Republicans say?"
This is silly. I think embryos are obviously alive (as are sperm cells for that matter). I don't think this means killing one should be considered murder. So I have no problem with current IVF procedures.
"as are sperm cells for that matter"
The whole world tap dances around this fact, so tap dancing around IVF won't be a problem for Republicans.
Life is continuous, so formulating the question as "When does life begin?" is nonsensical.
I’ve made the same argument a thousand times.
Abortion is not a biology debate. It is a philosophical and ethical debate. What’s truly ironic is that so many people spouting off in the biological weeds are so wrong about textbook-level biology.
"Life is continuous, so formulating the question as "When does life begin?" is nonsensical."
The human germ line is immortal. Our soma evolved solely to perpetuate the germ line.
Yes, the question has always been about legal personhood; which is explicit in the text of the Life at Conception Act, H.R. 431.
The Constitution protects the life of persons.
Not that I agree with conservatives’ conclusions, but it is not that hard to reason yourself into a position where abortion is immoral but IVF is acceptable, even if some of the embryos wind up in the trash. You simply have to think about from behind a Rawlsian Veil of Ignorance, with your initial position in the primordial soup of souls and gametes.
From that position, abortion is still a tough call, with legitimate pros and cons over which reasonable people (and unborn souls) could disagree. IVF, in contrast, is a clear winner, with nearly all upside and effectively no downside. Those souls, sperm, and eggs would universally be willing to run the risk of IVF, because the 30% chance of living a meaningful life dwarfs the 70% chance of feeling and knowing nothing for a while and then dying in a toilet or trash, feeling and knowing nothing.
I think it’s just plain Ignorance that the Republicans drape themselves in. Very few of them are using high minded philosophy or logic to reason their beliefs. They just believe what they believe and discard everything else that conflicts with those beliefs. See also: homosexuality existing in hundreds of species, intersex babies being born with both sets of genitals thus proving there are more than 2 genders, every society that has nationwide gun control also has way fewer murders, heaps of evidence that the climate is changing, etc. None of this fits their beliefs on how the world “should” work so all of it must be ignored.
Should democrats, Biden and Harris specifically, focus the 2024 election on the theme of a GOP War on Women?
Certainly this needs to be a theme. You could also attack the GOP for its anti-family policies: opposing increases in child-care credits, separating families at the border. And its anti-life opposition to reasonable gun controls. These are broadly unpopular stands. Lots of GOP hypocrisy to chew on.
It all comes down to how much longer can women lie to themselves about how they are not full fledged human beings under Republican rule. I see Alabama women on the news crying about how much time and money they spent trying to get pregnant, and while I feel bad for them, there’s also a part of me screaming at the tv, “you’re in Alabama!!! What do you expect? !!! You’re lucky they let you leave the house by yourself there.” A couple of them said they were moving to another state (one said texas and I said wellll oooookkkkkkay. You must like to gamble.) but I don’t know why any women would be there in the first place except that it must be really cheap. (Shorter version: surprise! Alabama is below Third World. Yes, I’ve been there and it’s scary.”)
Irrefutable? Haven't seen one yet. As you suspected, the right needed red meat, and produced it.
"Keep in mind that this is from a conservative evangelical seminary professor, writing in Billy Graham’s magazine for editor Harold Lindsell:
'God does not regard the fetus as a soul, no matter how far gestation has progressed. The Law plainly exacts: “If a man kills any human life he will be put to death” (Lev. 24:17). But according to Exodus 21:22-24, the destruction of the fetus is not a capital offense. … Clearly, then, in contrast to the mother, the fetus is not reckoned as a soul.'
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/02/18/the-biblical-view-thats-younger-than-the-happy-meal/
Speaker Mike Johnson is solidly on both sides of the issue, as impossible as that is: https://www.jezebel.com/house-speaker-mike-johnson-plays-dumb-when-asked-about-1850994723
And then there's Steel who deplores the AL IVF ruling AND used it to get pregnant BUT voted against it. From the NR;
A Republican representative is outraged by the recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling restricting IVF—despite supporting a federal bill that would have done just that.
“As someone who struggled to get pregnant, I believe all life is a gift. IVF allowed me, as it has so many others, to start my family,” California Representative Michelle Steel tweeted on Thursday. “I believe there is nothing more pro-life than helping families have children, and I do not support federal restrictions on IVF.”
Steel’s solidarity with Alabaman IVF patients rings pretty hollow considering she co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act. The measure, which was introduced first in 2021 with 166 co-sponsors and then again in 2023 with 124, would have established that life begins at fertilization. The bill has not advanced since.