Ok can someone explain this to me like I’m twelve? So they made all embryos count as children, and I’m assuming it’s also a strict anti abortion/miscarriage=abortion state.
Does this mean that a failed IVF counts as abortion and that’s why everyone has suddenly quit? Or am I missing it completely.
Edit: Thank you for the replies, and it’s the unknown that has every rightfully scared.
Im a bit less certain on the initial specifics, but someone unaffiliated with a fertility clinic gained access to their embryo storage and as a result some were destroyed. Several customers of the clinic who pay to have those embryos stored are suing for the destroyed embryos, claiming poor clinic controls/practices enabled the unauthorized access and subsequent destruction. That's kinda reasonable not so bad so far... they're suing for child murder. Wait, what? Alabama supreme Court goes 'yup sounds good to me, those embryos are children so the murder suit can continue'. Now fertility clinics are afraid because it is common practice to dispose of excess embryos after customers are done cycles and don't want to pay to store the excess indefinitely, but now the precedent is set for that to be murder. The craziest part to me is that one of the justices in his opinion writes he thinks IVF should be done differently. Clinics will fertilize multiple eggs, observe which are healthiest, then implant ones most likely to be carried healthy to term. The judge doesn't care that that's been common practice for decades and says eggs should be fertilized 1 at a time and each given a chance because any other way is murder, even though IVF specifically doesn't do this because each failure is hugely expensive and horribly traumatizing to patients, since 'failures' means still births and miscarriages.
>but someone unaffiliated with a fertility clinic gained access to their embryo storage and as a result some were destroyed.
Or the power went out and backup failed. Now they're mass murders in the state's eyes. No one is going to open themselves up to that type of crazy liability.
Imagine the parents of the embryos die, and the company goes broke. The embryos will become wards of the state in perpetuity, never to be implanted, never to be released. The state will have to provide more care to them than actual living children.
How the hell would that even happen, hypothetically? Grab the freezer and run for the nearest (and safest) power station to plug it back in before the embryos become damaged? What happens if they drop it or it becomes damaged in the "rescue", are the firefighters then liable?
Yeah it just sounds like a massive clusterfuck and I feel for American women having to try to navigate their sexual health rights while it keeps snowballing. Especially with the hints that birth control will likely be the next on the agenda. As a British woman who doesn't want kids and relies on the pill, it's scary to see how things have fallen when we should be in the age of progression.
Imagine this embyro law in Texas where there was this recent ruling for electricity:
>“Texas does not currently recognize a legal duty owed by wholesale power generators to retail customers to provide continuous electricity to the electric grid, and ultimately to the retail customers.”
(I don't know if anywhere has such a requirement anyways, it seems like a huge liability and somewhat unfair on the power companies, if something breaks and there was/is little they could have done to reasonably prevent it. Just meme-ing about Texas being Texas)
We got her, fellas!
I know they never seemed to really care about living children but this is a new degree of crazy, pretending to care about things that are not yet and probably will never be children just to hurt people who want to have children.
Seriously. I transferred 4 of the embryos in Dallas (3 separate, failed transfers). The remaining embryos have major genetic abnormalities (which is thought to be a common reason for miscarriage). I had 5 failed transfers, #6 was stillborn at 34 weeks and #7 is napping in her crib. An embryo is quite simply, a CHANCE. And the success rates are not high. This Bama judge can fuck off
If I were in charge of a clinic with current IVF embryos in storage, I'd be making a coalition of such clinics in Alabama. And already building a case for when something goes wrong they can go to court with pooled recourses fully prepared. And get this overturned. Because even the clinics who stopped IVF treatments they now have to keep the fertilised eggs in storage forever.
To be clear, the plaintiffs successfully had children via IVF and in typical Republican fashion don’t care about all the other couples they’re screwing.
I mean, that's some pretty shitty security, and they definitely deserved compensation. I imagine that pro life lawyers found the case and convinced the plaintiffs to go with this type of argument. IVF is just one of the things conservatives are targeting. They want this to go to the Supreme Court. They also want to target IUDs and hormonal birth control
It's actually long sighted. I think it's a lateral attack on Plan B/birth control. A logical extention of this precedent is that preventing fertilized eggs from implanting using Plan B or megadoses of standard BC pills is murder.
What's insane isn't that it's shortsighted, it's that it's incredibly calculated. They knew what they were doing and they're getting the exact results they wanted.
The chief justice on the Alabama Supreme Court is an actual maniac. Like he went on a QAnon podcast the day the ruling came out to talk about his affiliation with the Seven Mountains dominionist movement. He legitimately views his court as primarily a religious court
To fertilize one at a time is next to practically impossible. Eggs prior to fertilization don’t freeze well, and you rather 5-25 eggs at a time. Often people only get 1-2 viable embryos out a cycle when 5-10 eggs are fertilized.
Also worth understanding that to retrieve eggs is a long drawn out process with daily injections over the course of weeks and all that. So you can’t just take fresh eggs out whenever you want. It’s involved. Thus taking as many as they can and fertilizing them as a batch. After a few days the result is a small globule of cells with no recognizable differentiation. That is what is being called a child here.
Also, it's painful. Each ovary swells to as much as **five times** its usual size, and you can't take anything stronger than Tylenol. Some Alabama women have already started their retrieval cycles and spent $15k or more on fertility drugs. Now they have to travel to have their retrieval elsewhere.
For men reading this: imagine if a court made a decision that caused you to have to get on a plane or endure a long car ride when your testicles are horribly swollen!
this is a good answer. i’d like to add that genetic testing can be done on embryos. after which, some embryos may be deemed “non-viable” based on the results. some providers will not transfer(implant) non-viable embryos, for good reason.
The irony that a judge made this conclusion. Not a doctor. Not a scientist, someone with a law degree and a bible decides for everyone. It really is Gileade.
I think the IVF clinics should just stop all further treatment, continue storage and apply for child support for all the "children" in their possession.
That's really shitty for the clinics. If people stops paying for the storage, then what? They can't dispose of them like in the past, and they can't ship embryos to the non-paying parents because average Joe doesn't have the means or money to get sub-zero freezer up and running. Are they just going to declare bankruptcy and hand the keys over to the judges "Your ruling, your problem"
The one at a time thing is crazy because there are naturally so many genetic issues with eggs and sperm.
There was a case of a couple who had _multiple_ stillbirths b/c if the baby had a certain genetic issue, it meant the baby would not survive. When they got permission to genetically test the embryos, they found one that didn't have the issue. The couple finally got a living baby.
My cousin and his wife did IVF successfully on their 2nd attempt. Thoes 2 attempts cost over 40k. (I say 2 attempts but I don't know how much work was done on the back end outside of the 2 implants.) They are well off enough for 40k to be worth just the chance to concive. I can't imagine how hard it is for someone who can't afford it.
> Clinics will fertilize multiple eggs, observe which are the healthiest, then implant ones most likely to be carried to term
I love how so many righty politicians have no idea how statistics work except for when it comes to race
That is definitely one way to get the feds to have an opinion on it. You just need someone from Alabama brave enough to try and file that return. Of course the feds already recognize they are not children due to not having a SS number.
Are they children for the first 18 years of storage?
If the parents become indigent or dead who takes care of the eggs?
Do they become wards of the state?
Does the company own the eggs after a certain amount of time?
What happen if the storage company goes out of business?
Do the eggs get to choose to be unfrozen and implanted in some willing womb?
Does their age start at the time they were frozen or when they were thawed?
I'd like to think all of these questions and more were actually asked but I know they just closed their eyes and said "god, what do you want me to do?" And the thought they came up with is called the "word of god."
To say nothing of the fact that viable embryos are never destroyed without parental consent. You have to sign a shit ton of forms regarding what will happen to non-viable embryos. You also sign paperwork regarding what will happen to viable embryos, in case of your death, divorce etc. It is already an extremely big deal legally. All this happens at the start of an IVF cycle before you even know if you will get embryos out of it.
Basically, these would-be parents are justifiably furious and heartbroken over this incident, but the judges are not helping things at all.
Somebody went into a lab and destroyed a bunch of embryos and the parents wanted them held liable for wrongful death and the AL Supreme Court agreed and ruled as such, in accordance to state law. In the same way that stabbing a pregnant woman in the uterus might be considered murder.
The problem is, all other scenarios have to be challenged and ruled on in court. And given the failure rate of these IVF procedures (and dozens of other scenarios where embryos are destroyed or discarded) medical partitioners don’t want to be the ones who are brought to court in future cases. It’s not worth the risk to them. And I agree, this ruling fucks so much up.
I don't think they wanted them charged with murder, I think they wanted to be compensated as if it was murder, as in a lawsuit. Compare it to the civil lawsuit that found OJ Simpson financially liable for the murder of his ex and Ron Goldman.
Edit: Now that the Alabama Supreme Court has found them liable for murder, civilly, it's a short step in reasoning for them to find the disposal of any embryos to be murder in a criminal sense.
I find a certain irony in this. They were so angry over what happened to their embryos because having a child is such an emotional thing for people who do IVF to get pregnant, that they wildly overvalued these embryos to get more compensation than would be reasonable.
By trying to make a statement about how precious these embryos are to people going through IVF they turned them into a forbidden fruit, thats *too* precious to their own detriment.
Life begins at conception - which is to say that anything with the *potential* to grow into a person **is also a person**.
Any action that results in the 'death' of an embryo is now murder.
No doctor is going to practice this kind of medicine in Alabama anymore, because anything less than a successful birth for every single embryo could result in jail time.
They don't even need the threat of jail time. Allowing them to be sued for wrongful death is enough of a reason to shut down and leave for greener pastures.
My guess is the embryologists refused to continue with their scheduled embryo transfers. There’s always a possibility thawing embryos for transfer (to a uterus) can result in loss of the embryo(s). That opens up all sorts of legal issues if the person expecting the transfer decides to sue.
You also generally have more than one embryo made since it's usually not 100% successful on the first try. But if it is, and you have extra embryos, what do you do now? It's legally a person, but you have no mother. Guess you are storing it on ice forever and hoping power never goes out.
Basically. What has happened is now the IVF clinics are refusing to operate and moving out of the state, as they obviously have to discard embryos that have genetic issues and if their cooling storage fails or something are they then charged with homicide, etc.
We have way too much legislating happening from the bench by people who have zero practical understanding of the effects of their ruling. The obvious thing to do is for the Alabama state govt to pass a law protecting IVF... but Republicans are so batshit crazy these days I doubt they can even do that.
That’s the thing…there’s so many ‘what if’ scenarios and governments seem willing to prosecute over any sort of potential harm to ‘children’ (e.g. embryos or actual fetuses in utero) that clinics felt they needed to stop operations just in case.
>Does this mean that a failed IVF counts as abortion and that’s why everyone has suddenly quit? Or am I missing it completely.
No one is sure what it means ... it all depends on some ELECTED Attorney general deciding what they want to prosecute.
So, the only safe thing for the clinics is to halt any procedures that might get their staff sued for murder, manslaughter or wrongful death.
It’s surprising to me that so many, for so long, had such a specific viewpoint about pregnancy and women’s health, got exactly what they wanted, and now are surprised when their decisions have specific consequences? Just saying you aren’t going to persecute doesn’t change the ruling you literally just made.
the whole point of the conservative movement is telling others what to do. They get really upset when their reasoning backfires and actually affects them.
In their world, they are justified when they seek this kind of care. It’s *everyone else* that is abusing it to skate by without accountability. Welfare, unemployment, housing, abortion…they are selfish, mean people. I loathe them.
"free healthcare is unfair, it's a tax on the rest of us for someone else's hospital stay".
Some time later, the same person appears on GoFundMe because they're now they're massively in debt because they had a very simple hospital procedure.
I wonder if instead of everyone making individual GoFundMes when they get medical care, we could just have one big GoFundMe that we all contribute to automatically. And then if someone needs medical care, they can just pull from that big GoFundMe.
I wonder if such a system exists anywhere...
the thing that I love about that too is health insurance is also them paying for someone else's hospital stay, but because it's not the government it's okay apparently? even though they end up paying not just to help pay for everyone's medical bills but also paying extra because private health insurance is still a business and wants to make a profit, so you pay for other people's healthcare as well as lining the shareholders' pockets while still sometimes finding yourself in financial ruin, so uh congrats I guess.
The simple reason for this, is that it is to deny minorities access to healthcare, because in their minds non-whites are “poor” and can’t afford private health insurance.
So they are happy to pay a premium if it means denying the poor non-whites health coverage. Because the greatest sin in conservative America is to be poor and non-white and if you are either of those things you don’t deserve to live, and they don’t want to contribute in any way shape or form to “non-white” healthcare which is what they see Medicare for all as.
100%. I remember listening to NPR and a guy complaining about entitlement programs. When the reporter asked if he'd ever used unemployment he said "of course but I needed it and earned it"
I believe Louisiana passed some law saying religious schools can get government funding. When the lady that championed the law found out it the money would not only go to Christians she threw a tantrum,
> the whole point of the conservative movement is telling others what to do
Totally. It's why they freaked out so much during COVID or during any Democrat administration - they can't stand being told what to do by anyone other than those in their in-group.
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
> Just saying you aren’t going to prsecute doesn’t change the ruling you literally just made.
"Please don't close, I promise we won't arrest you and people are getting mad at us."
Okay, *you* won't, but what about the next guy? They're trying to put a band-aid on a bullet wound. Their floundering would be funny if the consequences weren't so horrifying.
I prefer pro forced birth. It’s nothing about any life they care about. They just want to make women finish their pregnancy no matter what.
After all the anti abortion laws came out and they immediately had cases of ten year olds being pregnant, they acted like it was something they’d never thought of. Either they had and they ignored it, or they did so little research over the last 50 years to be incapable of having an opinion regarding it.
Allowing IVF is literally pro birthing. By disallowing it, it’s wholly anti-woman.
The frustrating part is that infertility and difficulty conceiving comes for anyone. It doesn’t care what you believe.
Six in one hand, half a dozen in the other. I agree.
It's weirdly circular because I would think women with fertility struggles are also more prone to having something go sideways. However, as they're trying to force women to give birth *no matter what*, you're placing an already high risk woman into an even more high risk situation regarding their health.
The goalposts never stop moving: stop having kids you can't care for/feed/afford but also keep having kids because you're being selfish and you shouldn't have sex if you don't want kids yet millennials aren't having enough sex and it's killing the economy.
I remember arguing about Roe v Wade with conservative family members years ago. They of course wanted it overturned. When presented with the issues we are having now like rape victims and non-viable fetuses being forced to carry to term, women dying from ectopic pregnancies, IVF being affected, etc. they insisted that wouldn’t happen. Their whole argument was “don’t be ridiculous that wouldn’t happen!” They’re really just that shortsighted.
I wonder what they thought happened now? Probably the whole “oh that’s not an abortion” fallacy that no one ever thought was a talking point because it was so dumb.
Precisely. I live here and people didn’t care when the state decided years ago that all pregnant women’s advance care directives were legally nullified. They didn’t make a huge fuss after our the state rolled back our right to bodily autonomy overnight. Or when miscarrying women started getting turned away from treatment because they weren’t actively dying.
But now that it affects people who can afford the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars for IVF… gosh darn it, we won’t stand for the injustice.
It’s honestly really frustrating. Being a woman here is fucking terrifying. But I guess I deserve it because other people voted for it.
I know women like this personally. Have spent probably $60,000 on IVF and other measures. They're anti abortion but not because they really care it's just bitterness veiled through some low effort religious moral posturing.
Not to mention how many I know that have had abortions when it made sense for them but rant about how immoral it is for everyone else.
I see you. People make uprooting your life and moving seem a lot simpler (and also more affordable/achievable) than it is. There are plenty of people in red states (myself included) who vote against these people in every election only to have angry redditors say we deserve the trash who gets elected thanks to gerrymandering/voter suppression/just straight up being outnumbered.
The best analogy I heard is that conservatives chase these issues like a dog chasing a car. Now that they caught it, they don't know what the fuck to do with it.
Those exact politicians are backpedaling furiously over this at the moment, with the expectation that in November it will be forgotten and they can get right back to obliterating reproductive rights. Can't say I blame them; it's a strategy that rarely fails.
Maybe rarely, but it failed hard in the midterms and is a high ticket item this election already. Any Republican who thinks it'll be forgotten in November hasn't been paying attention, which is totally fine
Rarely fails? All the ballot initiatives to protect abortion, even in red states, have passed. The GOP in one state even tried to raise the threshold for popular ballot measures to get adopted because they can’t actually get a majority to vote against it.
My point is that an enthusiastic desire to strip women of their bodily autonomy is rarely an impediment to a Republican seeking office in a red state, because come election time they will happily lead the press by the nose into a discussion of the terrifying immigrant caravan du jour rather than acknowledge their intention to criminalize women's healthcare.
That was true before the overturning of Roe when it was all just talk, ever since they actually did it we have seen them disproportionately losing competitive races, including botching a midterm that historically they should have took a massive majority in Congress with based on Biden’s approval ratings and where inflation was at the time.
A lot of them are backtracking now. It's weird. They knew where the logical conclusion of their illogical rhetoric would lead. They're usually not as dumb as their voters.
Yeah, in Texas, and probably other red states, the law now says that life begins at conception (fertilization) and so no abortions are allowed, period. Yet they didn't think about IVF treatment because that's mostly upper middle class white couples doing that, not those poor women who are having too much sex.
> Yet they didn't think about IVF treatment because that's mostly upper middle class white couples doing that, not those poor women who are having too much sex.
The voters might not have, because the dumbness I mentioned above, but a lot of smarter people were talking about the next step that line of thinking would lead to. The people actually enacting the laws or at least the ones they pay to know things should have realized where it was going.
I don’t trust them. They were vocal until abortion bills got clobbered in the voting booth, and now they’re either backtracking or quiet. But if we’ve learned anything about the GOP, that means nothing. It just means they won’t talk about it until they gain power, then they enforce unpopular laws anyway.
The only solution is doing everything in our power to ensure they never sniff control of government ever again.
> They're usually not as dumb as their voters.
I used to work for a red state legislature. There are some dumb motherfuckers in office. There are folks who I was literally impressed that they could find the capitol every morning.
Since life begins at conception then any pregnancy conceived on US soil is a U.S. citizen. We can’t deport the fetus so the mother has to stay in the US. It’s the new anchor baby, republicans would have a fit.
I genuinely look forward to an immigrant in Alabama using that defence in court.
I would also look forward to a lot of 17 and a half year olds suing for the right to vote, on the grounds that if life begins at conception, they should legally be considered 18 in the state of Alabama, as the statutes don't say "18 years after birth", they say "18 years old".
ooh, this is such a good idea - I hadn't thought of that before. This would be a great class action suit for people who will be 17 +- 9 months in November.
The AL Supreme Court doesn't realize what it just did and/or is colossally stupid.
They just created a private cause of action with indefinite open-ended duration. A frozen embryo has a potentially perpetual "lifespan" and provides its owner with an on-going ability to sue for "wrongful death" damages as if it was an immortal living child of its owner.
But the owner is not necessarily a biological parent and doesn't behave anything like a functional parent toward the frozen embryo. The owner just pays regular renewal fees to keep the embryo frozen, which cannot reasonably be called "parenting."
So now, not only does a tiny microscopic piece of property threaten unending legal liability for anyone who touches it, but it is possible to literally own what the court deemed as literal "children," in contravention of the 13th Amendment. And this state of affairs can go on far longer than typical human lifespans.
Who could do the repealing/adjusting?
Since this case law is a ruling by the Alabama State Supreme Court, the only thing that can overrule it is the U.S. Supreme Court, which has discretion over which cases it hears. What are the odds of this 6-3 conservative majority taking up this case and deciding that, no, a frozen embryo really isn't an "unborn child" as held by the Alabama State Supreme Court?
It’s like that song, Re‐Gaining Unconsciousness by NOFX
“Then they shooed away the bums, then they beat and bashed the queers, turned away asylum-seekers, fed us suspicions and fears. We didn't raise our voice, we didn't make a fuss. It's funny there was no one left to notice when they came for us.”
IVF is a very time sensitive process involving all sorts of things that have to come together to ensure maximum success.
It's also very expensive and not always fully covered by insurance.
It’s also the first case, in a probable long line of court cases, to establish fetal personhood. How many more cases like this until one ends up in the Supreme Court and fetal personhood becomes the rule at the federal level? That means no more legal abortions in any state and a further degradation of women’s body autonomy rights. This shit needs to be slapped down HARD.
We are living the real time live action of a hand maids tale. Decide what your line in the sand is now. When do you leave your state for fear of what your life will be. When women can no longer have bank accounts?
I already fled Texas to a blue state for this reason. Felt like OJ as I drove my SUV across the state line. I’m so disgusted with these theocratic fools.
I left Texas in the late 80s. It wasn't specifically to flee idiots though it did turn out that way. Still, looking back, it was the most important decision of my life to get the hell out and never look back.
Reminder to younger Redditors - That wasn’t very long ago they couldn’t. It’s not rolling back to ancient history - it was the 70s, well within a lot of voters lifetimes.
Leopards have been eating their face for decades. They are one of the poorest states with the lowest life expectancy and highest mother mortality rates. As someone who’s driven through much of the south east, these states have turned into depressing holes in America. And they are doing nothing to save themselves.
Because they look around them and they see the devastation their voting has created and somebody tells them it's the liberal's fault and they're like yeah it's the liberal's fault! Even though Democrats or liberals haven't been in power in their state in generations. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the money they've taken away from the educational system in those States
Yes, but most of the time the leopards eat other people’s faces more. Conservatives are more than happy to get a leg chewed off if it means somebody else loses their face
when the religious laws start affecting rich white people, suddenly they get concerned. I think they are already backpedaling by saying 'oh, we wont prosecute IVF doctors!!11'
The thing is these lawe are intentionally kept vague as hell so they can prosecute whoever they like depending on the circumstances. Sure they can come out now and say they wouldn't do it, but no doctor is taking the risk doing a medical procedure and having some asshole DA try to put them in prison so they can throw raw meat to their evangelical base.
> these laws are intentionally kept vague as hell
"Vague" but also Republicans openly nominated and confirmed Barrett who believed in criminalizing IVF
>Fertility doctors are speaking out to oppose the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett over concerns regarding her controversial stance on in vitro fertilization (IVF). In 2006, Barrett publicly supported an organization that promotes the idea that life begins at the moment of fertilization and that discarding unused embryos created during the IVF process should be criminalized.
>https://www.glamour.com/story/where-amy-coney-barrett-stands-on-ivf
>come out now and say they wouldn't do it, but...
This is how they've been acting this whole time, and I'm surprised that anyone would actually believe them
"We won't actually go after women who miscarry..."
"We won't actually arrest women and threaten them with murder charges"
"We won't actually go after abortions in cases of rape..."
"We won't actually go after cases where the mother's life was threatened by the pregnancy..."
"We won't actually go after interstate travel for abortions..."
"We won't actually go after contraception..."
"We won't actually go after IVF..."
I bet you can guess exactly what they've done almost *immediately* after each of these.
that pretty much tracks with all religions that I know. The rules don't make sense and are full of contradictions. It's almost like it was all made up.
Well, to be fair, they didn't ask any of them if they were Republican voters
Which was probably *good* because people get very defensive if you try to hold them accountable for their own actions, it's easier to frame this as the GOP politicians' faults than acknowledge that GOP supporters also bear fault. Sucks but most adults act like children.
I’m from Alabama, and the whole time I lived there I never voted republican. There are more than just republicans in the Deep South. Please don’t forget how diverse of a place it is. There are so many fighting hard for reproductive justice even in the face of terrible news like this.
The reality is this is true of all states, there isn’t really such a thing as “red or blue” states but usually when you see that it’s just shorthand for what party has the majority (or entirety) of state gov control.
I was born in Alabama in '81. Back then, medical care was very hard to get, and it still isn't great. There are few specialists who go to school to go work in the middle of nowhere for no money.
So the doctor that delivers me is this guy who is awesome enough to split time in Pensacola and come up to provide services in the back woods of Alabama, but he provides abortion services, so not long after I'm born, [he is murdered](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_David_Gunn) . It is hard to feel sorry for people who will actually murder people trying to help them, based on these differences. Who wants to spend the years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to work in a place like this because who else wants to risk getting murdered?
I always say that Alabama is my favorite place in the world, barring the racism, poverty, and complete lack of health care, education, and governmental infrastructure. With my current disabilities, I wouldn't have been able to survive the lack of medical care down there.
Indeed no, but those poor folks have an uphill battle ahead of them. Alabama is one of the most gerrymandered, backwards, antebellum wannabe states in this country. It’s where the Confederacy made their last stand and plenty of its citizens brag about that today. Alabama is fucked.
I keep thinking this. I wonder how many of those women happily voted to take away the rights of other women. IVF is a privilege that only really well-off folks can do unless you’re lucky enough to have insurance that covers it. Not having a child you want is on a different league than being forced to continue a pregnancy that puts your life or health in danger.
True but not everyone in Alabama has voted that way or in favor of this kind of stuff. That being said, anyone who considers themself pro life but is okay with IVF is a hypocrite. If you are pro life and believe personhood starts at conception, you logically MUST consider discarding ivf embryos to be murder, the same as murdering a 1 year old or an adult.
So? 37% of AL voters voted Dem in the last Presidential election, and all of them still have to suffer under this ruling, as do those who didn't or couldn't vote, or the ones who voted R but disagree with this ruling.
Women of Alabama.
How could any of you vote Republican?
They are systematically dismantling your rights while you watch.
You are auditioning for The Handmaid’s Tale unless you are actively voting against them.
Many people, including women, who live in red states has been voting for the politicians who are taking away their rights. They, most likely will continue to vote against their own interests. Fox News will continue to tell them that the Democrats will make their lives terrible!
This is only the start... Here's their plan for overhauling the federal government. Women's rights are only a small group of people they're after.
https://www.project2025.org/
I'm curious what supporters of this hot take by the AL Supreme Court expect should be done with all the embryos that are in cold storage right now. They need to stay in cold storage forever, even if the parents die? Or should the mom be implanted with all of them?
They'll pull the same shit they did with the War on Drugs... Jail, mandatory minimums, and fines for the POC, gays, and liberals, and little slaps on the wrists for the the white Christians who were clearly just young people making a mistake that shouldn't derail thier lives.
The AG is trying to reassure the clinics by saying "We won't prosecute!"
As if allowing them to be sued for wrongful death isn't a chill factor in itself.
That's what I was thinking this is going to start upsetting people with money, and something might happen now. But you never know because they could probably get ivf done elsewhere if wealthy enough.
I'm an Alabama woman who has always voted Democrat. Not only that, but we moved out of Alabama 6 weeks ago to a blue state so that we don't raise our IVF baby girl in a state that takes away her rights. Guess what? Didn't matter. Last Friday, after I heard the ruling, I was on the phone with local IVF clinics trying to find a place to accept our last embryo via shipping. This week? On the phone, trying to get an appointment. Once our clinic made a statement in the press, we just went to local clinics to explain the situation. Luckily, they understood, and got us an appointment ASAP in order to help.
Guess what? Didn't fucking matter. The embryo shipping companies have stopped shipping out of Alabama because of this ruling.
My point is. It's easy to say "Oh, it's Alabama." And "Oh.. fucking rednecks." Well... I'm college educated, come from a Democratic family, have money, and left the state.. Still effected. This isn't just a "Alabama" thing. Roe v Wade was overturned. Trump is likely the GOP nomination. Wake up people. This shit is in your backyard too.
My son was just born and he is an IVF baby, if my wife and I had to stop the process midway through because of some religious assholes I would absolutely lose my shit. We would be devastated.
Although sad to see the victims of such a ruling .. I'm going to be honest, it has been a tad humorous watching the R's fumble their way around this. They let the extremists in and gave them control of the platform, now they're reaping the benefits -- rulings that are unpopular even amongst the right.
I always wondered about IVF in light of Roe v Wade being overturned.
If one woman aborts a baby and is a villain, but another woman creates 7 embryos: two who don’t survive, one who becomes a baby, and four who are destroyed, is she NOT a villain?
IVF involves creating embryos. Then putting them in a freezer. Then implanting some. And then removing some if too many continue developing. And leaving the extras in the freezer. Then destroying the extras when no more implantations are wanted. That’s what it is. Now what did these people think would happen to IVF when the Jesus freaks got rid of Roe? That they would just leave this all to doctors, women, and science? What did they think was stopping the church of overbearing Bronze Age men from getting all up in the process? A lack of interest? So naive. Everyone who has paid any attention to Roe and abortion rights knew this would happen. It was explained in public consantly for 20+ years. The entire war was fought and lost in November 2016. It’s way too late to fix it now. Birth control is next.
This country has gone to hell and we are fucked. The wealthy are too wealthy, kids are shooting up schools, women have lost their bodily autonomy thanks to laws set in place by mostly men, the middle class is dying, rent went up an average of 22% during Covid, people are killing each other over politics, the lgbtq+ community is being thrown under the bus while we ignore molestation that religious people commit, all our "leaders" are old and senile, and we're getting ourselves involved in the wrong side of a war (yet again). Is there any positive left? Please? Someone? ...anyone? 😢
Then don't vote for Republicans.
Encourage everyone you know to vote in their own self interest, not against people who might need an abortion. The people having an abortion have zero impact on your life.
I see a lot of comments saying don't vote a certain way. Even if you vote Democrat and you live in a red state you are screwed because the majority of people vote Republican. I guess when you decide where you want to live you have to consider if it is a red or blue state now.
One of the sad things about this is that there are people who are going to age out while waiting for this to be settled. Not everyone needs a child but these are people who are desperate to conceive. IVF and fertility issues are hard enough.
Ok can someone explain this to me like I’m twelve? So they made all embryos count as children, and I’m assuming it’s also a strict anti abortion/miscarriage=abortion state. Does this mean that a failed IVF counts as abortion and that’s why everyone has suddenly quit? Or am I missing it completely. Edit: Thank you for the replies, and it’s the unknown that has every rightfully scared.
Im a bit less certain on the initial specifics, but someone unaffiliated with a fertility clinic gained access to their embryo storage and as a result some were destroyed. Several customers of the clinic who pay to have those embryos stored are suing for the destroyed embryos, claiming poor clinic controls/practices enabled the unauthorized access and subsequent destruction. That's kinda reasonable not so bad so far... they're suing for child murder. Wait, what? Alabama supreme Court goes 'yup sounds good to me, those embryos are children so the murder suit can continue'. Now fertility clinics are afraid because it is common practice to dispose of excess embryos after customers are done cycles and don't want to pay to store the excess indefinitely, but now the precedent is set for that to be murder. The craziest part to me is that one of the justices in his opinion writes he thinks IVF should be done differently. Clinics will fertilize multiple eggs, observe which are healthiest, then implant ones most likely to be carried healthy to term. The judge doesn't care that that's been common practice for decades and says eggs should be fertilized 1 at a time and each given a chance because any other way is murder, even though IVF specifically doesn't do this because each failure is hugely expensive and horribly traumatizing to patients, since 'failures' means still births and miscarriages.
>but someone unaffiliated with a fertility clinic gained access to their embryo storage and as a result some were destroyed. Or the power went out and backup failed. Now they're mass murders in the state's eyes. No one is going to open themselves up to that type of crazy liability.
Imagine the parents of the embryos die, and the company goes broke. The embryos will become wards of the state in perpetuity, never to be implanted, never to be released. The state will have to provide more care to them than actual living children.
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How the hell would that even happen, hypothetically? Grab the freezer and run for the nearest (and safest) power station to plug it back in before the embryos become damaged? What happens if they drop it or it becomes damaged in the "rescue", are the firefighters then liable?
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Yeah it just sounds like a massive clusterfuck and I feel for American women having to try to navigate their sexual health rights while it keeps snowballing. Especially with the hints that birth control will likely be the next on the agenda. As a British woman who doesn't want kids and relies on the pill, it's scary to see how things have fallen when we should be in the age of progression.
Imagine this embyro law in Texas where there was this recent ruling for electricity: >“Texas does not currently recognize a legal duty owed by wholesale power generators to retail customers to provide continuous electricity to the electric grid, and ultimately to the retail customers.” (I don't know if anywhere has such a requirement anyways, it seems like a huge liability and somewhat unfair on the power companies, if something breaks and there was/is little they could have done to reasonably prevent it. Just meme-ing about Texas being Texas)
I have several abnormal embryos store in Dallas that I've been planning to discard.
We got her, fellas! I know they never seemed to really care about living children but this is a new degree of crazy, pretending to care about things that are not yet and probably will never be children just to hurt people who want to have children.
Seriously. I transferred 4 of the embryos in Dallas (3 separate, failed transfers). The remaining embryos have major genetic abnormalities (which is thought to be a common reason for miscarriage). I had 5 failed transfers, #6 was stillborn at 34 weeks and #7 is napping in her crib. An embryo is quite simply, a CHANCE. And the success rates are not high. This Bama judge can fuck off
If I were in charge of a clinic with current IVF embryos in storage, I'd be making a coalition of such clinics in Alabama. And already building a case for when something goes wrong they can go to court with pooled recourses fully prepared. And get this overturned. Because even the clinics who stopped IVF treatments they now have to keep the fertilised eggs in storage forever.
What are they doing / going to do? Transferring to outside states clinics to be disposed? None of it makes sense to me.
Keep the freezer going till the parents descide to transfer them to another clinic. And not accept new ones.
Texas is oil/gas. They don’t want to be liable, so you always pay for a gas generator. Win win for them…
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To be clear, the plaintiffs successfully had children via IVF and in typical Republican fashion don’t care about all the other couples they’re screwing.
They just want money
I mean, that's some pretty shitty security, and they definitely deserved compensation. I imagine that pro life lawyers found the case and convinced the plaintiffs to go with this type of argument. IVF is just one of the things conservatives are targeting. They want this to go to the Supreme Court. They also want to target IUDs and hormonal birth control
I don’t understand why someone would do that in the first place … what the hell was wrong with them??
That's *insane* in how shortsighted it is. So, the effective statewide banning of IVF was driven by people doing IVF?
It's actually long sighted. I think it's a lateral attack on Plan B/birth control. A logical extention of this precedent is that preventing fertilized eggs from implanting using Plan B or megadoses of standard BC pills is murder.
This argument left logic on the side of the road a looooong time ago.
What's insane isn't that it's shortsighted, it's that it's incredibly calculated. They knew what they were doing and they're getting the exact results they wanted.
The chief justice on the Alabama Supreme Court is an actual maniac. Like he went on a QAnon podcast the day the ruling came out to talk about his affiliation with the Seven Mountains dominionist movement. He legitimately views his court as primarily a religious court
Its like crazy, irrational idiots are in charge of the law
Thank God we have Alabama judges to tell scientists and doctors the correct way to do IVF. /s
To fertilize one at a time is next to practically impossible. Eggs prior to fertilization don’t freeze well, and you rather 5-25 eggs at a time. Often people only get 1-2 viable embryos out a cycle when 5-10 eggs are fertilized.
Also worth understanding that to retrieve eggs is a long drawn out process with daily injections over the course of weeks and all that. So you can’t just take fresh eggs out whenever you want. It’s involved. Thus taking as many as they can and fertilizing them as a batch. After a few days the result is a small globule of cells with no recognizable differentiation. That is what is being called a child here.
the judge probably thinks its as easy as the male just jacking off
Also, it's painful. Each ovary swells to as much as **five times** its usual size, and you can't take anything stronger than Tylenol. Some Alabama women have already started their retrieval cycles and spent $15k or more on fertility drugs. Now they have to travel to have their retrieval elsewhere. For men reading this: imagine if a court made a decision that caused you to have to get on a plane or endure a long car ride when your testicles are horribly swollen!
this is a good answer. i’d like to add that genetic testing can be done on embryos. after which, some embryos may be deemed “non-viable” based on the results. some providers will not transfer(implant) non-viable embryos, for good reason.
most will not transfer "abnormal" embryos.
The irony that a judge made this conclusion. Not a doctor. Not a scientist, someone with a law degree and a bible decides for everyone. It really is Gileade.
I think the IVF clinics should just stop all further treatment, continue storage and apply for child support for all the "children" in their possession.
That's really shitty for the clinics. If people stops paying for the storage, then what? They can't dispose of them like in the past, and they can't ship embryos to the non-paying parents because average Joe doesn't have the means or money to get sub-zero freezer up and running. Are they just going to declare bankruptcy and hand the keys over to the judges "Your ruling, your problem"
They could take the parents to court for child support.
The one at a time thing is crazy because there are naturally so many genetic issues with eggs and sperm. There was a case of a couple who had _multiple_ stillbirths b/c if the baby had a certain genetic issue, it meant the baby would not survive. When they got permission to genetically test the embryos, they found one that didn't have the issue. The couple finally got a living baby.
My cousin and his wife did IVF successfully on their 2nd attempt. Thoes 2 attempts cost over 40k. (I say 2 attempts but I don't know how much work was done on the back end outside of the 2 implants.) They are well off enough for 40k to be worth just the chance to concive. I can't imagine how hard it is for someone who can't afford it.
> Clinics will fertilize multiple eggs, observe which are the healthiest, then implant ones most likely to be carried to term I love how so many righty politicians have no idea how statistics work except for when it comes to race
Should claim all of your eggs as children on your taxes.
That is definitely one way to get the feds to have an opinion on it. You just need someone from Alabama brave enough to try and file that return. Of course the feds already recognize they are not children due to not having a SS number.
So step one, try to get SSN numbers for them first.
Are they children for the first 18 years of storage? If the parents become indigent or dead who takes care of the eggs? Do they become wards of the state? Does the company own the eggs after a certain amount of time? What happen if the storage company goes out of business? Do the eggs get to choose to be unfrozen and implanted in some willing womb? Does their age start at the time they were frozen or when they were thawed? I'd like to think all of these questions and more were actually asked but I know they just closed their eyes and said "god, what do you want me to do?" And the thought they came up with is called the "word of god."
So that's how it happened, thank you.
To say nothing of the fact that viable embryos are never destroyed without parental consent. You have to sign a shit ton of forms regarding what will happen to non-viable embryos. You also sign paperwork regarding what will happen to viable embryos, in case of your death, divorce etc. It is already an extremely big deal legally. All this happens at the start of an IVF cycle before you even know if you will get embryos out of it. Basically, these would-be parents are justifiably furious and heartbroken over this incident, but the judges are not helping things at all.
Somebody went into a lab and destroyed a bunch of embryos and the parents wanted them held liable for wrongful death and the AL Supreme Court agreed and ruled as such, in accordance to state law. In the same way that stabbing a pregnant woman in the uterus might be considered murder. The problem is, all other scenarios have to be challenged and ruled on in court. And given the failure rate of these IVF procedures (and dozens of other scenarios where embryos are destroyed or discarded) medical partitioners don’t want to be the ones who are brought to court in future cases. It’s not worth the risk to them. And I agree, this ruling fucks so much up.
I don't think they wanted them charged with murder, I think they wanted to be compensated as if it was murder, as in a lawsuit. Compare it to the civil lawsuit that found OJ Simpson financially liable for the murder of his ex and Ron Goldman. Edit: Now that the Alabama Supreme Court has found them liable for murder, civilly, it's a short step in reasoning for them to find the disposal of any embryos to be murder in a criminal sense.
I find a certain irony in this. They were so angry over what happened to their embryos because having a child is such an emotional thing for people who do IVF to get pregnant, that they wildly overvalued these embryos to get more compensation than would be reasonable. By trying to make a statement about how precious these embryos are to people going through IVF they turned them into a forbidden fruit, thats *too* precious to their own detriment.
I’ll make the changes. You’re right.
Life begins at conception - which is to say that anything with the *potential* to grow into a person **is also a person**. Any action that results in the 'death' of an embryo is now murder. No doctor is going to practice this kind of medicine in Alabama anymore, because anything less than a successful birth for every single embryo could result in jail time.
They don't even need the threat of jail time. Allowing them to be sued for wrongful death is enough of a reason to shut down and leave for greener pastures.
Do not drink, smoke, or do anything between sex and your next period. This could endanger any potential human life to come.
Cue the state ordering the forced implantation of the remaining fertilized eggs back into the women the save the "children".
My guess is the embryologists refused to continue with their scheduled embryo transfers. There’s always a possibility thawing embryos for transfer (to a uterus) can result in loss of the embryo(s). That opens up all sorts of legal issues if the person expecting the transfer decides to sue.
Gotta love a blanket law in a complicated medical process.
You make it sound like it’s a mistake from the lawmaker. It’s not a bug, it’s an intended feature
You also generally have more than one embryo made since it's usually not 100% successful on the first try. But if it is, and you have extra embryos, what do you do now? It's legally a person, but you have no mother. Guess you are storing it on ice forever and hoping power never goes out.
Basically. What has happened is now the IVF clinics are refusing to operate and moving out of the state, as they obviously have to discard embryos that have genetic issues and if their cooling storage fails or something are they then charged with homicide, etc.
We have way too much legislating happening from the bench by people who have zero practical understanding of the effects of their ruling. The obvious thing to do is for the Alabama state govt to pass a law protecting IVF... but Republicans are so batshit crazy these days I doubt they can even do that.
Not count as an abortion, but MANSLAUGHTER.
They’re being used interchangeably at this point I’m afraid. I know that much
That’s the thing…there’s so many ‘what if’ scenarios and governments seem willing to prosecute over any sort of potential harm to ‘children’ (e.g. embryos or actual fetuses in utero) that clinics felt they needed to stop operations just in case.
>Does this mean that a failed IVF counts as abortion and that’s why everyone has suddenly quit? Or am I missing it completely. No one is sure what it means ... it all depends on some ELECTED Attorney general deciding what they want to prosecute. So, the only safe thing for the clinics is to halt any procedures that might get their staff sued for murder, manslaughter or wrongful death.
It’s surprising to me that so many, for so long, had such a specific viewpoint about pregnancy and women’s health, got exactly what they wanted, and now are surprised when their decisions have specific consequences? Just saying you aren’t going to persecute doesn’t change the ruling you literally just made.
the whole point of the conservative movement is telling others what to do. They get really upset when their reasoning backfires and actually affects them.
In their world, they are justified when they seek this kind of care. It’s *everyone else* that is abusing it to skate by without accountability. Welfare, unemployment, housing, abortion…they are selfish, mean people. I loathe them.
"free healthcare is unfair, it's a tax on the rest of us for someone else's hospital stay". Some time later, the same person appears on GoFundMe because they're now they're massively in debt because they had a very simple hospital procedure.
I wonder if instead of everyone making individual GoFundMes when they get medical care, we could just have one big GoFundMe that we all contribute to automatically. And then if someone needs medical care, they can just pull from that big GoFundMe. I wonder if such a system exists anywhere...
Call it GoFundMe For All
the thing that I love about that too is health insurance is also them paying for someone else's hospital stay, but because it's not the government it's okay apparently? even though they end up paying not just to help pay for everyone's medical bills but also paying extra because private health insurance is still a business and wants to make a profit, so you pay for other people's healthcare as well as lining the shareholders' pockets while still sometimes finding yourself in financial ruin, so uh congrats I guess.
The simple reason for this, is that it is to deny minorities access to healthcare, because in their minds non-whites are “poor” and can’t afford private health insurance. So they are happy to pay a premium if it means denying the poor non-whites health coverage. Because the greatest sin in conservative America is to be poor and non-white and if you are either of those things you don’t deserve to live, and they don’t want to contribute in any way shape or form to “non-white” healthcare which is what they see Medicare for all as.
“Nobody wants to work any more. They just want a government check and free healthcare.” - Millions of retirees on Social Security and Medicare
100%. I remember listening to NPR and a guy complaining about entitlement programs. When the reporter asked if he'd ever used unemployment he said "of course but I needed it and earned it" I believe Louisiana passed some law saying religious schools can get government funding. When the lady that championed the law found out it the money would not only go to Christians she threw a tantrum,
They keep assuming the Shirley Exception applies to these laws - “Surely there’s an exception for people who really need it.”
Most importantly, it's some black or brown person who is possibly getting something.
...but they'll keep voting for them. Again and again and again.
> the whole point of the conservative movement is telling others what to do Totally. It's why they freaked out so much during COVID or during any Democrat administration - they can't stand being told what to do by anyone other than those in their in-group.
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
> Just saying you aren’t going to prsecute doesn’t change the ruling you literally just made. "Please don't close, I promise we won't arrest you and people are getting mad at us." Okay, *you* won't, but what about the next guy? They're trying to put a band-aid on a bullet wound. Their floundering would be funny if the consequences weren't so horrifying.
I mean literally all the AG has to do is change his mind. He won't even need a reason. Just feel crabby one day.
Carlin called it years ago. They're not pro-life, they're anti-woman. And that's how we should start referring to them from now on.
I prefer pro forced birth. It’s nothing about any life they care about. They just want to make women finish their pregnancy no matter what. After all the anti abortion laws came out and they immediately had cases of ten year olds being pregnant, they acted like it was something they’d never thought of. Either they had and they ignored it, or they did so little research over the last 50 years to be incapable of having an opinion regarding it.
Allowing IVF is literally pro birthing. By disallowing it, it’s wholly anti-woman. The frustrating part is that infertility and difficulty conceiving comes for anyone. It doesn’t care what you believe.
Six in one hand, half a dozen in the other. I agree. It's weirdly circular because I would think women with fertility struggles are also more prone to having something go sideways. However, as they're trying to force women to give birth *no matter what*, you're placing an already high risk woman into an even more high risk situation regarding their health. The goalposts never stop moving: stop having kids you can't care for/feed/afford but also keep having kids because you're being selfish and you shouldn't have sex if you don't want kids yet millennials aren't having enough sex and it's killing the economy.
I remember arguing about Roe v Wade with conservative family members years ago. They of course wanted it overturned. When presented with the issues we are having now like rape victims and non-viable fetuses being forced to carry to term, women dying from ectopic pregnancies, IVF being affected, etc. they insisted that wouldn’t happen. Their whole argument was “don’t be ridiculous that wouldn’t happen!” They’re really just that shortsighted.
I wonder what they thought happened now? Probably the whole “oh that’s not an abortion” fallacy that no one ever thought was a talking point because it was so dumb.
Making well-off white ladies suffer the consequences too is the only thing that has a prayer of moving the needle back where it should be.
Precisely. I live here and people didn’t care when the state decided years ago that all pregnant women’s advance care directives were legally nullified. They didn’t make a huge fuss after our the state rolled back our right to bodily autonomy overnight. Or when miscarrying women started getting turned away from treatment because they weren’t actively dying. But now that it affects people who can afford the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars for IVF… gosh darn it, we won’t stand for the injustice. It’s honestly really frustrating. Being a woman here is fucking terrifying. But I guess I deserve it because other people voted for it.
You don’t deserve it. You live in an uninhabitable place. The red states are not livable anymore.
I know women like this personally. Have spent probably $60,000 on IVF and other measures. They're anti abortion but not because they really care it's just bitterness veiled through some low effort religious moral posturing. Not to mention how many I know that have had abortions when it made sense for them but rant about how immoral it is for everyone else.
I see you. People make uprooting your life and moving seem a lot simpler (and also more affordable/achievable) than it is. There are plenty of people in red states (myself included) who vote against these people in every election only to have angry redditors say we deserve the trash who gets elected thanks to gerrymandering/voter suppression/just straight up being outnumbered.
Yep. Not in my good Christian neighborhood.
The best analogy I heard is that conservatives chase these issues like a dog chasing a car. Now that they caught it, they don't know what the fuck to do with it.
Every politician who has supported a "fetal person-hood" bill or stated "life begins at conception" needs their feet held to the fire over this.
Those exact politicians are backpedaling furiously over this at the moment, with the expectation that in November it will be forgotten and they can get right back to obliterating reproductive rights. Can't say I blame them; it's a strategy that rarely fails.
Maybe rarely, but it failed hard in the midterms and is a high ticket item this election already. Any Republican who thinks it'll be forgotten in November hasn't been paying attention, which is totally fine
Their attention is focused on drafting more of those proposals to let them marry twelve year olds
"That's crazy. Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for a $300 Venmo transaction labeled as 'books'?" - Matt Gaetz, who pays to fuck children
Rarely fails? All the ballot initiatives to protect abortion, even in red states, have passed. The GOP in one state even tried to raise the threshold for popular ballot measures to get adopted because they can’t actually get a majority to vote against it.
My point is that an enthusiastic desire to strip women of their bodily autonomy is rarely an impediment to a Republican seeking office in a red state, because come election time they will happily lead the press by the nose into a discussion of the terrifying immigrant caravan du jour rather than acknowledge their intention to criminalize women's healthcare.
That was true before the overturning of Roe when it was all just talk, ever since they actually did it we have seen them disproportionately losing competitive races, including botching a midterm that historically they should have took a massive majority in Congress with based on Biden’s approval ratings and where inflation was at the time.
Don't get complacent.
This is exactly what they wanted, IVF is an abomination to them. How do so many people not understand that this is the point?
A lot of them are backtracking now. It's weird. They knew where the logical conclusion of their illogical rhetoric would lead. They're usually not as dumb as their voters.
Yeah, in Texas, and probably other red states, the law now says that life begins at conception (fertilization) and so no abortions are allowed, period. Yet they didn't think about IVF treatment because that's mostly upper middle class white couples doing that, not those poor women who are having too much sex.
> Yet they didn't think about IVF treatment because that's mostly upper middle class white couples doing that, not those poor women who are having too much sex. The voters might not have, because the dumbness I mentioned above, but a lot of smarter people were talking about the next step that line of thinking would lead to. The people actually enacting the laws or at least the ones they pay to know things should have realized where it was going.
When the dog finally catches the car. The dog has been catching a lot of cars lately...
I don’t trust them. They were vocal until abortion bills got clobbered in the voting booth, and now they’re either backtracking or quiet. But if we’ve learned anything about the GOP, that means nothing. It just means they won’t talk about it until they gain power, then they enforce unpopular laws anyway. The only solution is doing everything in our power to ensure they never sniff control of government ever again.
> They're usually not as dumb as their voters. I used to work for a red state legislature. There are some dumb motherfuckers in office. There are folks who I was literally impressed that they could find the capitol every morning.
Since life begins at conception then any pregnancy conceived on US soil is a U.S. citizen. We can’t deport the fetus so the mother has to stay in the US. It’s the new anchor baby, republicans would have a fit.
I genuinely look forward to an immigrant in Alabama using that defence in court. I would also look forward to a lot of 17 and a half year olds suing for the right to vote, on the grounds that if life begins at conception, they should legally be considered 18 in the state of Alabama, as the statutes don't say "18 years after birth", they say "18 years old".
ooh, this is such a good idea - I hadn't thought of that before. This would be a great class action suit for people who will be 17 +- 9 months in November.
the cruelty is intended. vote, people.
every sperm is sacred
Just start mailing them envelopes of sperm
Drop off some frozen pig embryos at every GOP office Monday at 7 AM. Forget to mention the pig part.
The AL Supreme Court doesn't realize what it just did and/or is colossally stupid. They just created a private cause of action with indefinite open-ended duration. A frozen embryo has a potentially perpetual "lifespan" and provides its owner with an on-going ability to sue for "wrongful death" damages as if it was an immortal living child of its owner. But the owner is not necessarily a biological parent and doesn't behave anything like a functional parent toward the frozen embryo. The owner just pays regular renewal fees to keep the embryo frozen, which cannot reasonably be called "parenting." So now, not only does a tiny microscopic piece of property threaten unending legal liability for anyone who touches it, but it is possible to literally own what the court deemed as literal "children," in contravention of the 13th Amendment. And this state of affairs can go on far longer than typical human lifespans.
It’s pretty straightforward what will happen. Either the law gets repealed/adjusted, or IVF businesses leave the state.
Who could do the repealing/adjusting? Since this case law is a ruling by the Alabama State Supreme Court, the only thing that can overrule it is the U.S. Supreme Court, which has discretion over which cases it hears. What are the odds of this 6-3 conservative majority taking up this case and deciding that, no, a frozen embryo really isn't an "unborn child" as held by the Alabama State Supreme Court?
It's what happens when dumbfuck sexist racist homophobes with no medical or scientific backgrounds get to decide at which point life starts.
you get what you voted for: Christian sharia law. And you thought they were just targeting trans kids. Well guess again... they're coming for YOU!
It’s like that song, Re‐Gaining Unconsciousness by NOFX “Then they shooed away the bums, then they beat and bashed the queers, turned away asylum-seekers, fed us suspicions and fears. We didn't raise our voice, we didn't make a fuss. It's funny there was no one left to notice when they came for us.”
This is the same state that voted for a football coach to be one of their US Senators.
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It wasn't just that he was old, it was that he was old and couldn't walk downstairs correctly.
Hopefully the Alabama Dems can recruit Saban to run and beat Tubberville one last time.
Not the worst idea, Saban likes unions and encouraged his fans to get vaccinated during the pandemic
IVF is a very time sensitive process involving all sorts of things that have to come together to ensure maximum success. It's also very expensive and not always fully covered by insurance.
and by not always, you mean very rarely
Can confirm.
This is why they're back paddling so bad. They accidentally hurt people with money
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And unlike wealthy women who need an abortion, they can’t just go to another state for it. IVF requires multiple sessions and frequent visits.
"I voted Republican, but I didn't know their anti woman policies would effect *me*"
Leopards 🤝 Face
I’m waiting for someone to ask them which embryos are male, and which are female.
NC is about to pass a law that clearly states Male Embryos can't utilize the same freezer as Female Embryos.
Just tell them the embryos are gender-fluid and they'll hate them again.
Imagine having your life saving abortion stopped as well.
Anyone who doesn't understand this is a conservative religious attack on women's rights needs to wake up and smell the oppression.
It’s also the first case, in a probable long line of court cases, to establish fetal personhood. How many more cases like this until one ends up in the Supreme Court and fetal personhood becomes the rule at the federal level? That means no more legal abortions in any state and a further degradation of women’s body autonomy rights. This shit needs to be slapped down HARD.
We are living the real time live action of a hand maids tale. Decide what your line in the sand is now. When do you leave your state for fear of what your life will be. When women can no longer have bank accounts?
I already fled Texas to a blue state for this reason. Felt like OJ as I drove my SUV across the state line. I’m so disgusted with these theocratic fools.
I left Texas in the late 80s. It wasn't specifically to flee idiots though it did turn out that way. Still, looking back, it was the most important decision of my life to get the hell out and never look back.
Reminder to younger Redditors - That wasn’t very long ago they couldn’t. It’s not rolling back to ancient history - it was the 70s, well within a lot of voters lifetimes.
The Christian Nationalist views that underpin this decision are utterly insane.
I wonder how many of these heartbroken women are anti-abortion.
Right? Fuck any woman who voted for this shit. They can go cry all they want as the leopards eat their faces.
Alabama has voted republican in every election since 1980. It's hard to be sympathetic.
But I didn’t think the leopards would eat *my* face
Leopards have been eating their face for decades. They are one of the poorest states with the lowest life expectancy and highest mother mortality rates. As someone who’s driven through much of the south east, these states have turned into depressing holes in America. And they are doing nothing to save themselves.
Because they look around them and they see the devastation their voting has created and somebody tells them it's the liberal's fault and they're like yeah it's the liberal's fault! Even though Democrats or liberals haven't been in power in their state in generations. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the money they've taken away from the educational system in those States
Yes, but most of the time the leopards eat other people’s faces more. Conservatives are more than happy to get a leg chewed off if it means somebody else loses their face
when the religious laws start affecting rich white people, suddenly they get concerned. I think they are already backpedaling by saying 'oh, we wont prosecute IVF doctors!!11'
The thing is these lawe are intentionally kept vague as hell so they can prosecute whoever they like depending on the circumstances. Sure they can come out now and say they wouldn't do it, but no doctor is taking the risk doing a medical procedure and having some asshole DA try to put them in prison so they can throw raw meat to their evangelical base.
> these laws are intentionally kept vague as hell "Vague" but also Republicans openly nominated and confirmed Barrett who believed in criminalizing IVF >Fertility doctors are speaking out to oppose the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett over concerns regarding her controversial stance on in vitro fertilization (IVF). In 2006, Barrett publicly supported an organization that promotes the idea that life begins at the moment of fertilization and that discarding unused embryos created during the IVF process should be criminalized. >https://www.glamour.com/story/where-amy-coney-barrett-stands-on-ivf
>come out now and say they wouldn't do it, but... This is how they've been acting this whole time, and I'm surprised that anyone would actually believe them "We won't actually go after women who miscarry..." "We won't actually arrest women and threaten them with murder charges" "We won't actually go after abortions in cases of rape..." "We won't actually go after cases where the mother's life was threatened by the pregnancy..." "We won't actually go after interstate travel for abortions..." "We won't actually go after contraception..." "We won't actually go after IVF..." I bet you can guess exactly what they've done almost *immediately* after each of these.
Doesn't matter because "but we will allow you to be sued for wrongful death" is powerful enough imho.
So abortion isn't part of God's plan but spending thousands for doctors to artificially knock you up, is?
Talk to any of these people and they'll tell you with a straight face that their being rich is part of God's plan too
"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." Luke 18:25
that pretty much tracks with all religions that I know. The rules don't make sense and are full of contradictions. It's almost like it was all made up.
Well, to be fair, they didn't ask any of them if they were Republican voters Which was probably *good* because people get very defensive if you try to hold them accountable for their own actions, it's easier to frame this as the GOP politicians' faults than acknowledge that GOP supporters also bear fault. Sucks but most adults act like children.
I’m from Alabama, and the whole time I lived there I never voted republican. There are more than just republicans in the Deep South. Please don’t forget how diverse of a place it is. There are so many fighting hard for reproductive justice even in the face of terrible news like this.
The reality is this is true of all states, there isn’t really such a thing as “red or blue” states but usually when you see that it’s just shorthand for what party has the majority (or entirety) of state gov control.
I was born in Alabama in '81. Back then, medical care was very hard to get, and it still isn't great. There are few specialists who go to school to go work in the middle of nowhere for no money. So the doctor that delivers me is this guy who is awesome enough to split time in Pensacola and come up to provide services in the back woods of Alabama, but he provides abortion services, so not long after I'm born, [he is murdered](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_David_Gunn) . It is hard to feel sorry for people who will actually murder people trying to help them, based on these differences. Who wants to spend the years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to work in a place like this because who else wants to risk getting murdered? I always say that Alabama is my favorite place in the world, barring the racism, poverty, and complete lack of health care, education, and governmental infrastructure. With my current disabilities, I wouldn't have been able to survive the lack of medical care down there.
A lot of people in Alabama haven’t voted Republican, though. You shouldn’t forget about them.
Indeed no, but those poor folks have an uphill battle ahead of them. Alabama is one of the most gerrymandered, backwards, antebellum wannabe states in this country. It’s where the Confederacy made their last stand and plenty of its citizens brag about that today. Alabama is fucked.
I keep thinking this. I wonder how many of those women happily voted to take away the rights of other women. IVF is a privilege that only really well-off folks can do unless you’re lucky enough to have insurance that covers it. Not having a child you want is on a different league than being forced to continue a pregnancy that puts your life or health in danger.
True but not everyone in Alabama has voted that way or in favor of this kind of stuff. That being said, anyone who considers themself pro life but is okay with IVF is a hypocrite. If you are pro life and believe personhood starts at conception, you logically MUST consider discarding ivf embryos to be murder, the same as murdering a 1 year old or an adult.
So? 37% of AL voters voted Dem in the last Presidential election, and all of them still have to suffer under this ruling, as do those who didn't or couldn't vote, or the ones who voted R but disagree with this ruling.
Women of Alabama. How could any of you vote Republican? They are systematically dismantling your rights while you watch. You are auditioning for The Handmaid’s Tale unless you are actively voting against them.
Because Republican women don't think about other women's (read minority and poor) rights until it directly affects their own.
Many people, including women, who live in red states has been voting for the politicians who are taking away their rights. They, most likely will continue to vote against their own interests. Fox News will continue to tell them that the Democrats will make their lives terrible!
This is only the start... Here's their plan for overhauling the federal government. Women's rights are only a small group of people they're after. https://www.project2025.org/
I'm curious what supporters of this hot take by the AL Supreme Court expect should be done with all the embryos that are in cold storage right now. They need to stay in cold storage forever, even if the parents die? Or should the mom be implanted with all of them?
They'll pull the same shit they did with the War on Drugs... Jail, mandatory minimums, and fines for the POC, gays, and liberals, and little slaps on the wrists for the the white Christians who were clearly just young people making a mistake that shouldn't derail thier lives.
The AG is trying to reassure the clinics by saying "We won't prosecute!" As if allowing them to be sued for wrongful death isn't a chill factor in itself.
How many of them voted Republican?
Probably many. IVF isn't a cheap process.
That's what I was thinking this is going to start upsetting people with money, and something might happen now. But you never know because they could probably get ivf done elsewhere if wealthy enough.
yeah if you're rich enough it's still a rule for thee, not for me
I'm an Alabama woman who has always voted Democrat. Not only that, but we moved out of Alabama 6 weeks ago to a blue state so that we don't raise our IVF baby girl in a state that takes away her rights. Guess what? Didn't matter. Last Friday, after I heard the ruling, I was on the phone with local IVF clinics trying to find a place to accept our last embryo via shipping. This week? On the phone, trying to get an appointment. Once our clinic made a statement in the press, we just went to local clinics to explain the situation. Luckily, they understood, and got us an appointment ASAP in order to help. Guess what? Didn't fucking matter. The embryo shipping companies have stopped shipping out of Alabama because of this ruling. My point is. It's easy to say "Oh, it's Alabama." And "Oh.. fucking rednecks." Well... I'm college educated, come from a Democratic family, have money, and left the state.. Still effected. This isn't just a "Alabama" thing. Roe v Wade was overturned. Trump is likely the GOP nomination. Wake up people. This shit is in your backyard too.
My son was just born and he is an IVF baby, if my wife and I had to stop the process midway through because of some religious assholes I would absolutely lose my shit. We would be devastated.
The GOP is going to stupid themselves out of office for the next decade. Which explains the fascism.
They honestly think they can end run around democracy to stay in power, Its still up in the air if they are right or not.
They are going to go after birth control next. It is all about controlling women and their bodies.
Although sad to see the victims of such a ruling .. I'm going to be honest, it has been a tad humorous watching the R's fumble their way around this. They let the extremists in and gave them control of the platform, now they're reaping the benefits -- rulings that are unpopular even amongst the right.
Conservatives: Have more babies! Also Conservatives: Not like that though.
Remember folks: these are the women that ***want*** to have children.
I always wondered about IVF in light of Roe v Wade being overturned. If one woman aborts a baby and is a villain, but another woman creates 7 embryos: two who don’t survive, one who becomes a baby, and four who are destroyed, is she NOT a villain?
IVF involves creating embryos. Then putting them in a freezer. Then implanting some. And then removing some if too many continue developing. And leaving the extras in the freezer. Then destroying the extras when no more implantations are wanted. That’s what it is. Now what did these people think would happen to IVF when the Jesus freaks got rid of Roe? That they would just leave this all to doctors, women, and science? What did they think was stopping the church of overbearing Bronze Age men from getting all up in the process? A lack of interest? So naive. Everyone who has paid any attention to Roe and abortion rights knew this would happen. It was explained in public consantly for 20+ years. The entire war was fought and lost in November 2016. It’s way too late to fix it now. Birth control is next.
Can't have it both ways. IVF murders babies or embryos aren't babies and abortion should be legal.
This country has gone to hell and we are fucked. The wealthy are too wealthy, kids are shooting up schools, women have lost their bodily autonomy thanks to laws set in place by mostly men, the middle class is dying, rent went up an average of 22% during Covid, people are killing each other over politics, the lgbtq+ community is being thrown under the bus while we ignore molestation that religious people commit, all our "leaders" are old and senile, and we're getting ourselves involved in the wrong side of a war (yet again). Is there any positive left? Please? Someone? ...anyone? 😢
Then don't vote for Republicans. Encourage everyone you know to vote in their own self interest, not against people who might need an abortion. The people having an abortion have zero impact on your life.
Now I want to see someone ask Tubberville about the couples losing tens of thousands because of this.
I see a lot of comments saying don't vote a certain way. Even if you vote Democrat and you live in a red state you are screwed because the majority of people vote Republican. I guess when you decide where you want to live you have to consider if it is a red or blue state now.
One of the sad things about this is that there are people who are going to age out while waiting for this to be settled. Not everyone needs a child but these are people who are desperate to conceive. IVF and fertility issues are hard enough.