Is Alabama the stupidest state in America?

[Lilith7]

Unbelievable.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024...ryo-ruling

"Alabama Fertility halts new procedures ‘due to the legal risk’ after state supreme court says embryos are ‘extrauterine children’
A second Alabama provider announced that it will pause its in-vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments on Thursday, just days after the state supreme court ruled in a first-of-its-kind decision that embryos are “extrauterine children”.

“We have made the impossibly difficult decision to hold new IVF treatments due to the legal risk to our clinic and our embryologists,” Alabama Fertility said in a post to its Instagram account. “We are contacting patients that will be affected today to find solutions for them and we are working as hard as we can to alert our legislators as to the far-reaching negative impact of this ruling on the women of Alabama.”

The Alabama supreme court ruling stemmed from two wrongful death lawsuits brought against an IVF clinic after several people’s frozen embryos were accidentally destroyed. The clinic pushed back against the lawsuits, arguing that Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act did not apply to frozen embryos, but the state supreme court ruled that the act does indeed apply.

“The central question presented in these consolidated appeals, which involve the death of embryos kept in a cryogenic nursery, is whether the act contains an unwritten exception to that rule for extrauterine children – that is, unborn children who are located outside of a biological uterus at the time they are killed,” the Alabama supreme court justice Jay Mitchell wrote. “Under existing black-letter law, the answer to that question is no: the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location.”
A concurring opinion, written by the Alabama state supreme court chief justice, Tom Parker, repeatedly invoked the Bible. “The principle itself – that human life is fundamentally distinct from other forms of life and cannot be taken intentionally without justification – has deep roots that reach back to the creation of man ‘in the image of God’,” Parker wrote, before citing Genesis 1:27 of the King James edition.

The Alabama ruling has rocked the country. IVF patients and advocates have vigorously opposed the ruling, which they say did not deal with the vast practical implications of legally recognizing frozen embryos as people. Doctors at Alabama Fertility said earlier this week that the ruling threatened to upend several steps of the IVF process.
The decision also cements tenets of so-called “fetal personhood” into Alabama law. Establishing that embryos and fetuses are people, complete with full legal rights and protections, is a long-term goal of many within the anti-abortion movement. Abortion foes are also often opposed to IVF."

[king1]

and the winner is... The Lawyers

[nzoomed]

Only in America!

[Lilith7]

Only in America!

You have to hope so! 
Some of them appear to have gone slightly barking mad...

This might be an excellent time for all women of childbearing age to leave Alabama - or better yet, ALL women.

[Lilith7]

And this idiotic move is even dividing devout christians in Alabama.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68396485


"When Alabama's Supreme Court defined frozen embryos as children, the shock and confusion was immediate. Major hospitals pulled fertility services and would-be parents scrambled for clarity on what would happen next.
The debate over reproductive rights in America has long been driven, in part, by opposition to abortion from Christian groups - but this ruling has divided that movement and ignited debate about the role of theology in US lawmaking.
Margaret Boyce is soft-spoken, a private person, and certainly not - in her words - a "crier".
She had been taking fertility drugs for 10 months and was days away from her first appointment for in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) when the justices of Alabama's top court upended her life.

Their ruling, which prompted many fertility clinics to pause their work, has left her turning to the Bible daily for comfort.
The 32-year-old and her husband have a young boy but, second time round, she is experiencing unexplained infertility. Building a family has always been the dream.
"The journey to becoming parents is different for every single couple - mentally, emotionally and financially," she added, welling up.
"This ruling has added more unnecessary anxiety to something that is already so hard."
For a devout Christian like Margaret, the ruling - given its consequences for what she sees clearly as a process to create life - is even more difficult to comprehend.
"God," she said, "tells you to go forth and be fruitful and multiply."

Some anti-abortion groups celebrated the explicit use of scripture in Justice Parker's opinion to justify what for them was a momentous decision.
Tony Perkins, president of evangelical activist group the Family Research Council, described it as "a beautiful defence of life".

But the chief justice's theocratic justification has left Margaret puzzled. She doesn't believe in abortion but she also struggles to see a frozen embryo as a living person. For her, life begins with a heartbeat.
"Nobody understands more that an embryo is not a child," she said, before taking a pause, "than the person yearning for that embryo to be a child."

[Lilith7]

It just doesn't make any sense; they seem not to have given any thought to other possible consequences as long as they can restrict women's rights in some way.
This article points out the likely consequebces for cancer patients who may have wanted to freeze eggs in order to later have children if the treatment is likely to render them sterile - surely something the right to birthers would want.



https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/35019...r-patients

"A cancer diagnosis often comes with a host of difficult decisions, including what to do about the impact of treatment on a person’s fertility. Many individuals grappling with this dual burden turn to in vitro fertilization (IVF) as a way to preserve their reproductive options.
That’s why cancer patients and oncologists are expressing shock and anxiety about the recent ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court that frozen embryos are considered children under the law.
The ruling is already having a chilling effect on IVF clinics in the state. Worries are mounting that other states could adopt similar rulings that would impede fertility medicine for people, including many cancer patients, who say assisted reproductive technology might be their only way of having a family after treatments.

“We’re leaving a lot of young men and women to deal with the long-lasting effects of the cancer treatments, and some of those effects could be infertility and premature menopause,” said Deanna Gerber, a gynecologic oncologist at NYU Langone Perlmutter Cancer Center who is a triple-negative breast cancer survivor.

Madeline B., 33, said she cried when she heard the news of the Alabama court ruling. She describes feeling overwhelmed and upset but said the ruling didn’t surprise her.
The Texas resident, who asked to be identified by her first name only for privacy reasons, underwent fertility treatments following a breast cancer diagnosis in 2019 and has one frozen embryo stored in case she decides to pursue IVF.
“I grew up in Catholic school, and my mom is a Catholic activist, so I have been very familiar with this kind of fetal personhood movement for a long time,” Madeline said. But she noted that individuals within the movement, including her mother,often have trouble reconciling their antiabortion beliefs with their support for fertility treatments - including her own.

“They can’t quite connect the cognitive dissonance that exists between the pro-life views and what they imply,” Madeline said.