Off The Deep End!

That is where the right-wing conservatives just went, off into lala land!

Fertility clinics just became mass murders! If they destroy embryos they could be arrested for murder!

Alabama Says Embryos in a Lab Are Children. What Are the Implications?
A ruling by the state’s Supreme Court could change common practices at fertility clinics in the state and possibly nationwide.
The New York Times
By Jan Hoffman
February 21, 2024

The Alabama Supreme Court has opened a new front in the legal debate over when human life begins. Embryos created and stored in a medical facility must be considered children under the state’s law governing harmful death, the court ruled.

Friday’s ruling was cheered by anti-abortion activists nationwide, who have long argued that life begins at conception. They were thrilled that, for the first time, a court included conception outside the uterus in that definition. But the strongest and most immediate effect of the decision will be on fertility patients trying to get pregnant, not women seeking to end their pregnancies.

Yikes! Just think about all the thousand of frozen embryos that they have stored, if they have a poert failure and the embryos thaw out they could be charged with mass murder!!!!

The ruling is actually somewhat narrow. It applies to three couples who had sued the Center for Reproductive Medicine, a fertility clinic in Mobile, for inadvertently destroying their embryos. The plaintiffs argued that they were entitled to punitive damages under Alabama’s 1872 Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. Two lower state courts disagreed, saying the embryos were neither people nor children. The State Supreme Court reversed those rulings, saying that the embryos fell squarely under Alabama’s definition of minors and that the negligence lawsuits could proceed. The case will now go back to the State District Court for further litigation.

[…]

The decision is silent on the fate of other frozen embryos in Alabama because that issue was not before the court. The ruling is only about the terms under which plaintiffs may bring a negligence case against a fertility clinic for embryo destruction. However, it could eventually have major consequences for Alabama patients and providers.

Yeah but… fertility clinics are quaking in their boots because they can see the handwriting on the wall, the “Right-to-lifers” have their foot in the door and they will try forcing it all the way open. The Republicans candidates are already rallying around the decision as a major step forward.

Nikki Haley sides with Alabama Supreme Court on IVF ruling: 'Embryos, to me, are babies'
The Alabama court's recent ruling raised concerns among doctors and patients that classifying embryos as children could restrict in-vitro fertilization.
NBC News
By Ali Vitali and Alex Rhoades
February 21, 2024


Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley said Wednesday that frozen embryos created through in-vitro fertilization are “babies,” siding with a recent Alabama Supreme Court decision that raised concerns among doctors and patients about the future of the procedure.

“Embryos, to me, are babies,” Haley told NBC News in an interview, adding that she used artificial insemination to have her son, a different process than IVF that doesn't present the same complexities around creating embryos in a lab. "When you talk about an embryo, you are talking about, to me, that’s a life. And so I do see where that’s coming from when they talk about that.”

Classifying embryos as children under state law raises significant questions about whether the practice, used by families having trouble conceiving, could continue in states like Alabama. Unused embryos are often destroyed, which could open families or clinics up to wrongful death lawsuits under this policy. Storing frozen embryos, meanwhile, is expensive.

Later on Wednesday, the University of Alabama at Birmingham announced that it was pausing IVF treatments in response to the state Supreme Court ruling.

What do you think fertility clinics going to do? Get rid of the embryos as fast as they can? Close their doors? Do you think that freshly minted doctors will head to Republican states?

Then down in Florida according to The Hill, they waisted no time in...

Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit evangelical Christian legal group, almost immediately filed a notice of supplemental authority with the Florida Supreme Court, arguing against a potential abortion ballot measure. 

The potential amendment will take away “a protected right to life for the unborn,” the group argued. 

“Every unborn life is a human being. Every human life begins as an embryo, and now the Alabama Supreme Court has upheld the decision of its citizenry that every unborn life should be protected, no matter their stage or location,” Liberty Counsel founder and Chair Mat Staver said in a statement. 

Like sharks drawn to blood, these vultures are drawn to another step toward a "Christian Nation."

In another New York Times article…

If you don’t think this country is sliding toward theocracy, you’re not paying attention.

The drumbeat of incidents moving us ever closer to the seemingly inescapable future is so steady and frequent that we’ve developed outrage fatigue — we’ve grown numb.

For instance, on Tuesday, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children, and that destruction of those embryos, even by accident, is subject to the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. In his concurring opinion, the chief justice of the court, Tom Parker, wrote, “Even before birth, all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.”

The ruling could mean less access to reproductive care in Alabama if specialists in the field of in vitro fertilization simply choose to practice in states that don’t threaten their efforts.

There have been cases before in which embryos were destroyed as a result of negligence, but the Alabama decision significantly ups the ante. It essentially turns cryopreservation tanks into frozen nurseries.

This ruling and the banning of abortions in Republican states is going to be the death knell for fertility clinics in Republican states.

Digging out old news stories about embryos being people I found this…

Are embryos people? The answer will determine the future of reproductive medicine

Stat

By Eric J. Forman

July 24, 2018

The announcement that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy will retire at the end of the month and President Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to take his place has spurred concern over the future of women’s reproductive options. Not only is the legal status of abortion at stake, but the concept of embryos as “persons” could be decided by the next Supreme Court.

So this is something that the Republicans have been working towards for a very long time.

The process works like this: After in vitro fertilization, several embryos are grown in the laboratory for five to six days. A few cells are removed from each embryo for genetic analysis, after which the embryos are frozen. The DNA from each embryo is carefully assessed for a variety of genetic disorders. A single genetically normal embryo can then be thawed and returned to the prospective mother’s uterus.

[…]

The status of preimplantation testing of human embryos is a complex ethical and emotional issue. Some people believe that life begins at fertilization and, since every life has inherent value, we should not “play God” by choosing not to implant some embryos. Others recognize that embryos have the potential to create a child but require many more steps, and that most embryos are actually incapable of creating a baby.

Alabama is the first state to reach their goal of bring The Handmaid's Tale to real life!

Eleven states have introduced “personhood” bills (none have passed) and more than a dozen court cases have been brought on this issue. The outcome of these cases could significantly limit the ability to practice reproductive medicine techniques such as IVF with preimplantation genetic testing.

God told him to do it!

The Alabama Chief Justice Who Invoked God in Deciding the Embryo Case

Chief Justice Tom Parker has long been revered by conservative groups as an architect for the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

The New York Times

By Rick Rojas

February 22, 2024

In an Alabama Supreme Court decision that has rattled reproductive medicine across the country, a majority of the justices said the law was clear that frozen embryos should be considered children: “Unborn children are ‘children.’”

But the court’s chief justice, Tom Parker, drew on more than the Constitution and legal precedent to explain his determination.

“Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God,” he wrote in a concurring opinion that invoked the Book of Genesis and the prophet Jeremiah and quoted at length from the writings of 16th- and 17th-century theologians.

“Even before birth,” he added, “all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.”

[…]

Since he was first elected to the nine-member court in 2004, and in his legal career before it, he has shown no reticence about expressing how his Christian beliefs have profoundly shaped his understanding of the law and his approach to it as a lawyer and judge.

Do you remember the Colorado Masterpiece Cakeshop case about the cake? The Supreme Court found in favor of the bakery because as the Constitution Center wrote, 

...the Supreme Court reversed the state civil rights commission’s ruling and concluded that the state commission, during its proceedings, appeared to express hostility towards the baker because of his religious beliefs.

Now the Alabama Supreme Court justice used religion for his ruling, will the U.S. Supreme Court use that to overturn the Alabama’s court ruling like they did for the Colorado case?

So now in Alabama with the court ruling the Republican dream of controlling a women’s body is complete! A woman to the Republicans is nothing more than an egg laying machine.

My body, my choice!

My body, my choice!

My body, my choice!

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This week’s Cuckoo Award goes to the Alabama Supreme Court for the craziest idea ever! This ruling will cause parents to think twice before getting IVF, normal they fertilize several eggs just in case the first ones don't take but now they cannot discard the unused embryos.

The Alabama Supreme Court just opened the largest Pandora's Box ever!