It looks like the Alabama Supreme Court has decided to go full Handmaidens Tale, citing the Bible as a justification to allow an IVF clinic to be sued because of a break-in at their facility.
I get that Alabama is ……… well ……… Alabama, and that the open air lunatic asylum that they call their state legislature passed extremely aggressive anti-abortion legislation that the courts are bound to follow, but citing the bible? That's just f%$#ing nuts.
A new ruling out of Alabama may spell the beginning of the end of the third-party fertility industry—and its reasoning partially relies on a verse from the Bible.
On Friday, the Alabama Supreme Court decided that embryos created through in-vitro fertilization would be protected under the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, effectively classifying single-celled, fertilized eggs as children.
The case, known as LePage v. Mobile Infirmary Clinic, Inc, rested upon an argument by several intended parents that their “embryonic children” had been victims of a wrongful death when an intruder broke into the IVF clinic, dropping trays containing some of the embryos and ultimately destroying them.
In a 7–2 decision, Alabama’s highest court ruled that the clinic had been negligent, allowing the parents to proceed with a wrongful death lawsuit. The court also ruled that it is “the public policy of this state to recognize and support the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children, including the right to life,” referring to the Alabama Constitution’s Sanctity of Life Amendment, ratified in 2018.
“Here, the text of the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act is sweeping and unqualified,” wrote Alabama Supreme Court Associate Justice Jay Mitchell in the majority’s opinion. “It applies to all children, born and unborn, without limitation. It is not the role of this Court to craft a new limitation based on our own view of what is or is not wise public policy. That is especially true where, as here, the People of this State have adopted a Constitutional amendment directly aimed at stopping courts from excluding ‘unborn life’ from legal protection.”
But the opinion also quotes the Bible as reasoning for functionally killing IVF access within the aggressively pro-life state, turning to an eyebrow-raising verse from Jeremiah 1:5 for guidance before deciding to make it harder for Alabamans to have a family.
“We believe that each human being, from the moment of conception, is made in the image of God, created by Him to reflect His likeness. It is as if the People of Alabama took what was spoken of the prophet Jeremiah and applied it to every unborn person in this state: ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, Before you were born I sanctified you.’ Jeremiah 1:5 (NKJV 1982),” the opinion read.
Now would be a good time to note that The University of Alabama at Birmingham’s health system is freezing all IVF treatments as a result of this ruling, and while an Alabama state senator is proposing a change to the law to apply protections only after implantation*, which would shield IVF clinics.
I don't think that the law will pass though, because it would also have the effect of legalizing the use of an IUD in Alabama, and most of the Talibaptists out there think that an IUD, by preventing implantation, is murder. (They also hate women and contraception more generally, but that is another rant.)
This is both terrifying and entirely unsurprising.
When the Supreme Court repealed Roe v. Wade, this was predicted before the ink was dry.
0 comments :
Post a Comment