Alabama ruling that embryos are "children"

[Samsond]

Anyone else really scared about the direction the US is going with these rulings? Alabama has already ruled against abortion for any reason whatsoever. Now all IVF in the state has had to be halted as a court has ruled that embryos are "children". I just can't understand what's going to happen there. It feels they're getting more and more like a religious fundamentalist state. Are they heading the way of somewhere like Iran? It's insane.

I also didn’t see my embryos as children.

even the embryos that became viable and were transferred into me, I didn’t consider children.

In the wake of the Supreme Court's decision Friday to overturn Roe v. Wade, privacy experts are increasingly concerned about how data collected from period-tracking apps, among other applications, could potentially be used to penalize anyone seeking or considering an abortion.

^^www.npr.org/2022/05/10/1097482967/roe-v-wade-supreme-court-abortion-period-apps

Why does the US seem to be going backwards wrt abortion etc?? I dont get it.

on another note, how do they feel about those women who are pregnant and are are drug addicts through the pregnancy? Surely thats child abuse then (which it should be anyway) if an embryo is a child?!

Viability is an incredibly interesting ethical discussion in abortion. If you don’t believe a 19-weeker should be aborted because it might be viable, do you believe that a woman who is seeking abortion should alternatively be able to request induction and live delivery of her foetus at 19 weeks (as opposed to abortion), be able to then relinquish her parental rights, and the foetus then be kept alive medically, regardless of the prognosis for it having a good ongoing quality of life? Which is the logical conclusion.

If you say (sensibly) “no, because it’s likely to have a very poor outcome if delivered so early so she shouldn’t be allowed to make that decision” then surely you have to accept that viability doesn’t simply mean “might be able to be kept breathing by a ventilator” and that that foetus is therefore still reliant on a woman who has her own rights which should take precedence.

Viability in terms of “possible chance of remaining alive by medical means after delivery” has indeed fallen in terms of weeks gestation in recent years; but viability in terms of “good likelihood of living a life little different in quality to that of a healthy baby born at term” really hasn’t fallen below about 28 weeks in about two decades. Very premature babies just don’t do well outside the womb. A 20-weeker can very occasionally be kept breathing mechanically; that’s not the same as the majority of 20-weekers having any decent chance of a good quality of life if they survive. For me, the latter is viability, not the former.

In addition to that, I don’t believe that viability should have any connection to abortion limits. My position is that a woman with a chosen pregnancy who desperately wants her very premature baby to be kept alive isn’t in the same circumstances as a woman with an unwanted pregnancy who has waited until 16-plus weeks to seek abortion. Across countries which allow abortion into the second trimester, about 6% of abortions are carried out between 16-20 weeks, and less than 1% after 20 weeks. (And this includes those who terminate for medical reasons.) The women who seek abortions very late are almost invariably vulnerable women: very young and in denial about their pregnancy, those with chaotic lifestyles and/or serious mental health issues, substance misusers, abused women. So when you seek to restrict later term abortions, you’re forcing the most vulnerable and damaged women to continue with pregnancies against their will. Is the additional damage caused to them by a forced pregnancy irrelevant?

It's one state out of 50. And the ruling was issued by a court using a biblical reference. In the US we are supposed to have separation of church and state. I feel this will be overturned by a federal court. But in the meantime I'm sure a lot of evangelicals will be trying to use this to remove contraception as an option.

They still need to be sent to the US. Do you really want to send your embryos to the US? Your clinic would need to release them - it’s entirely at their discretion - and I can’t see many reputable clinics doing so as they would be concerned about the HFEA. It’s often difficult to get them released for your own use overseas let alone given to a stranger.

You really don’t seem to understand nor know much about IVF process or regulation in the UK.

The ruling is that anyone who destroys frozen embryos can be charged with murder.

So if you have IVF that results in say 5 embryos you might have one or two implanted and the rest frozen.

But now those frozen embryos are sitting in a clinic. The clinic can't risk implanting them because if something happens then the clinic staff could be charged with murder.

It is not clear whether having two embryos implanted and only one surviving until birth means the mother is a murderer.

So all the clinics have just put everything on hold.

The Alabama ruling aligns with Project2025.

I once went down a rabbit hole after reading an article about Project2025 in the i.

There is a summary here and it covers Abortion and right to life across the US (as well as other highlights):

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025

The official website is here:

https://www.project2025.org/about/about-project-2025/

The specific section covering (and I paraphrase) ‘The dignity of a human being from the moment of inception’ is here:

class="underline">media.s3.amazonaws.com/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_CHAPTER-14.pdf thfmedia.s3.amazonaws.com/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_CHAPTER-14.pdf

A google news search on project2025 and the possible outcomes of a Trump election win comes up with many articles, but they are all just speculation. So a pinch of salt may be advised. Maybe a bucket of salt.

Which is a good stance to take. Believing project2025 to be ‘pie in the sky’ is - for me - a reassuring view to adopt.

Because if I were to believe that this blueprint could actually translate into US policy, I would despair and worry deeply about the future.

In reply to the pp, I think there should be a reasonable gap between the limit and viable outside the body. Late applications for good reason could go to a judge. I am definitely not pro until birth or even really to 24 weeks.
It's a science based ethical argument for me linked to foetal brain development, nervous system etc. Not about the mother or their choices really. There's a science based point it goes beyond 1 being into 2 that should be linked to abortion.

More widely, USA as the leader of the free world and the most powerful global state sets the tone for human rights, norms and values in the UN and across the world. China is rapidly gaining power, the belt and road initiative gains them global influence and they care not for IGO rules. And tbf since the eu and wto and USA just ignore the rules and do what profits them anyway in terms of trade and protectionism who can blame them.
But where is the world going? This is not the progressive good tech world I was promised by tomorrow's world. Not the global peace the UN though we'd almost achieved in the 90s.
Wonens rights are disappearing in the world's best supposed democracy.

Except...the USA is not the leader of the free world. Sure, that's what they like to call themselves, but exactly how much does the free world really listen to them?

Let's look at the developed world:

Canada - sees the US as the crazy cousin nobody invites to family gatherings
Every country in South America - sees them as nothing more than a bully
UK - usually follows along with foreign policy, rolls their eyes at US social policy
Europe - laughs at them heartily, about pretty much everything, but especially human rights and food standards
Far East - the US are useful customers to keep their economies ticking over, nothing more
Asia - the US is a target whose lunch needs to be eaten, just like the UK's
Australia - keep your crazy, we've got enough here already
NZ/Pacific Islands - LOL, you call that sport?

Hell, the most chest-beating, USA-is-star-spangled-awesome political party's main talking point is how bad the US is at democracy (regarding the loss to the Democrats last time round) and justice (how Trump's getting his ass handed to him in the courts). And we all know that quality of life in the US - access to healthcare, employees' rights etc - is lower than just about everywhere else in the developed world.

So no, they're not the leader of the free world, but it's handy for the population to believe that while their politicians and industry are stripping them of all the rights they'd have almost everywhere else, in return for hanging on to their guns.

When considering their influence on the world, you also have to consider where they actually sit on the political spectrum. Even our current insane-right government in the UK would be considered moderate centrists in the US. There is also the fact that their judiciary is a political body, not a purely legal one, and stacking that particular deck is how they're getting this stupidity into law. That can never happen here, because our judiciary is fully independent of our political system.

Yes but they still have a VETO at the security council, a deciding vote on the world bank, control the imf and have massive soft power. Plus the tnc's. And cultural homogenisation. American values spread. Don't write them off. Europe cannot beat USA and China. We have to stick with USA. This is what it boils down to.

China, Russia, UK and France also have security council veto.

They don't have control of the world bank, any three countries could easily cancel out their vote.

The EU also has veto power in the IMF (arguably a stronger veto than the US).

The point is that everything the US claims to have is held more strongly by cooperation elsewhere. And, if you think that their backwards religious obsession with sex and reproductive control is coming to the rest of the developed world - which is the point of this discussion - you're absolutely dreaming.

The US is an incredibly immature country, socially-speaking - they're only a few hundred years into figuring out how this running-a-country thing works, whereas the rest of the developed world is at least a thousand years beyond that at this point (experience earned by blood over centuries). Their legislative model is hilariously inadequate for the modern world, and stuck in a naive obsession with distributed control and central oversight which will forever prevent them from making any progress whatsoever, and that is the only reason that this sort of thing keeps happening - that's what makes it possible for a minority interest to control the law for the entire country without the support of the majority of the population (see also: gun control).

Basically, you just have to have a) a lot of money, and b) a bit of luck to stack the deck of SCOTUS (which, as discussed, is primarily a political body - something almost every other country in the developed world ditched decades, if not centuries, ago).

They may as well declare a theocracy 🙄

@ShareTheDuvet

Yes of course I was talking about the Church of England 🙄 You do realise other religions do exist in this country.

Well it was you who referenced bishops in the House of Lords (all of which are CofE) and church schools (which are either CofE or Catholic) so yes, I think it was reasonable for the PP to assume you were talking about be CofE

Interesting that the GOP - led by Trump - are rushing to distance themselves from this ruling. I hope the democrats won't let them.

This might blow your mind (it has mine), but Americans already pay 2x on taxes for their broken healthcare system than we do in the UK for our entire system. That’s for their MediCare and MedicAid programs.

When private insurance is included they pay 4x.

They could afford universal healthcare by simply nationalising their system to cut out insurance companies and negotiating the insane big Pharma drug prices down (like the NHS does in the UK).

In fact if they did all that, not only would they not have to pay for private health insurance, they could also cut taxes as the cost for the MedicAid and MediCare programs would come straight down.

America already spends more on healthcare than any other nation on earth. They could afford it, but theres no money in universal healthcare for insurance executives and corrupt politicians in Congress.

As for quality care, USA still have have some of the worst heath outcomes in the western world when it comes life expectancy, infant mortality, diabetes complications etc.

Insurance companies, corporate America in general, really have done an excellent job of in making Americans vote against everything that would benefit themselves.

The mental acrobatics they go through is absolutely mind boggling. “It’s all your fault!”

Excellent post, @BakedBeansforabrain . Thats what privatisation does. How else are the investors to make a profit at every level, eh?

This just what we do not want for our NHS.

Too late.

So far, it's only Alabama but their Chief Justice Tom Parker wrote "It will be up to the courts to dictate how IVF can be performed in a way that won’t cause harm to unborn children and won’t incur the “wrath of an angry God.” Even before birth, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory".

The same arguments used against abortion. Right now 21 of the 50 States of America ban all abortion after central government left it up to each Sste to legislate.

He suggested freezing embryos may no longer be allowed, and that doctors must create one embryo at a time and then implant it, no matter the quality.
At least one facility has already paused IVF treatment The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) health system.