First the crazy: Alabama has been calling embryos and fetuses ‘people’ for a long time. The latest ruling says that even frozen embryos are ‘people’. This ruling says:
“We believe that each human being, from the moment of conception, is made in the image of God, created by Him to reflect His likeness. It is as if the People of Alabama took what was spoken of the prophet Jeremiah and applied it to every unborn person in this state: ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, Before you were born I sanctified you.’ Jeremiah 1:5 (NKJV 1982)”.
source: archive: https://archive.is/fBJnL | https://premierchristian.news/en/news/article/created-by-him-to-reflect-his-likeness-alabama-judge-quotes-bible-in-embryo-lawsuit-ruling
USA Today points to Gorsuch as opening the gates to highly religious rulings:
The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause typically limits the role religion can play in government, but the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 changed the longstanding process by which it reviewed conflicts between government and religion. The decision to change that process was written by Justice Gorsuch, who said the court needed to rely more heavily on “reference to historical practices and understandings.” Parker, the Alabama judge, specifically referenced Gorsuch in his concurrent opinion.
source: archive: https://archive.is/cPjgw | https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/02/22/ivf-opinion-from-alabama-justice-was-overtly-religious/72689378007/
Slate points out that by the Court’s own logic, both the ‘parents’ and the clinic should be charged with murder (as well as the person who actually dropped the embryos).
source: archive: https://archive.is/7l3vx | https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/02/abortion-bans-alabamas-anti-ivf-ruling-fail.html
WITH ALL THAT:
Perhaps it is a good thing that the whole nation now has a reason to take a long hard look at what it means to be a ‘person’. I’ve seen studies saying anywhere from 20%-60% of all pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion; most before the woman realizes she is pregnant. This paper says maybe as low as 10%, but only if you aren’t paying attention: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5741961/
The spontaneous miscarriage rate varies between from 10% to 20% where 10% refers to late recognition of pregnancy and 20% refers to research involving routinely testing for pregnancy before 4 weeks or 4 weeks after the last menstrual period
This chart says there’s a 30% chance of miscarrying in the first week, with reduced risks after that: https://datayze.com/miscarriage-chart
Per Alabama, is God that invested in killing ‘unborn’ ‘people’? Given how likely it is for an embryo to naturally abort, can we ever claim “beyond reasonable doubt” that a pregnancy was ever viable?
The above Slate piece suggests the unborn be treated as property. That might work for cells you want to keep, but note that there’s a Supreme Court precedent that discarded cells are NOT a person’s property and can be commercialized (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks#Consent_issues_and_privacy_concerns).
If we try to define when life begins, the Religious Right is sure to get deference. Look at how they’ve put “heartbeat bills” in place for embryos that don’t HAVE HEARTS! Personally, I don’t think setting a time constraint should be involved in defining life, but we’re here to chat and discuss.
Lastly, CNN offered an opinion that we could choose to be more like South Korea which ruled (as summarized in Op-Ed):
If embryonic or fetal life has value, the state shouldn’t start with criminalization. Instead, the government may have a constitutional obligation to advance its interest in protecting that life in ways that don’t limit reproductive liberty, by protecting pregnant workers, delivering better prenatal care or safe housing and reducing the rate of maternal mortality.
source: archive: https://archive.is/GV0M0 | https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/21/opinions/alabama-supreme-court-fetal-embryo-personhood-abortion-ziegler/index.html
I’m thinking the ruling HAS to lead to conversations and demands to change the law. Yes, there’s a religious right that wants women barefoot and pregnant, but this ruling is going to prevent rich white religious women from getting pregnant. They’re going to complain.
Tonight’s “Alex Wagner” show on MSNBC had guest Michelle Goldberg hypothesizing that even ultra-conservative Alabama politicians are probably going to back off this ruling. She supposed they might decide embryos don’t count as a people unless they are attached to a uterus in a particular way … but the rich white religious wives might still have a problem with that limit when such embryos spontaneously fail later on in the pregnancy and everyone is back to being a murderer. Of course, those women are unlikely to realize how likely that is until it happens to each one of them individually (if it happens to someone else, that other person is obviously a ‘bad’ person or it would not have happened – so the only one who can be ‘good’ and still miscarry is oneself).
So how do we get the courts out of our bodies?