I’m sure that the forced-birthers will spring into action for increased environmental protection against the makers and users of those herbicides … right?
Or will it turn out that the backers of those groups also own chemical companies, and the subject just won’t ever come up?
In Indiana, most water (drinking, cooking, bathing, etc.) comes from either surface water or (usually not very deep, because that’s expensive) wells. Even most of the municipal water, except for a few municipalities near Lake Michigan.
And the cornstalk and soybean plant reign supreme!
Holy shit.
Ugh. These fucking people. From the decision:
This Court has long held that unborn children are “children” for
purposes of Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act
Later in the decision:
First enacted in 1872, the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act allows the
parents of a deceased child to bring a claim seeking punitive damages
“[w]hen the death of a minor child is caused by the wrongful act,
omission, or negligence of any person,” provided that they do so within
six months of the child’s passing. § 6-5-391(a). The Act does not define
either “child” or “minor child,” but this Court held in Mack v. Carmack,
79 So. 3d 597 (Ala. 2011), that an unborn child qualifies as a “minor child”
So…from 1872 until 2011, embryos and fetuses were not considered minor children for the purposes of that law. From 2011 until now, they have been. And that somehow qualifies as “This Court has long held.” Unbelievable.
Utterly and completely believable. Alabama is Gilead Aspiring.
I’m gonna lose my mind reading this bullshit.
“This Court’s most cited dictionary defines ‘child’ as ‘an unborn or recently born person,’” Ex parte Ankrom, 152 So. 3d 397, 431 (Ala. 2013) (Shaw, J., concurring in part and concurring in the result) (citing Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary
The full definition from Merriam-Webster is not so definitive.
1 a
: a young person especially between infancy and puberty
b
: a person not yet of the age of majority (see MAJORITY sense 2a)
c
: a childlike or childish person2a
: a son or daughter of human parents
b
: DESCENDANT3a
: an unborn or recently born person
b
dialect : a female infant
Even the dissents suck. They aren’t dissenting on the fundamental question of whether embryos are children or human life. They’re dissenting because the law was written in 1872 and couldn’t have possibly been intended to include IVF embryos because that technology didn’t exist. They’re right about that, but it still pisses me off that they still think the embryos are people, subject to the same rights and protections as people who have actually been born.
They should have to be able to differentiate a frozen embryo from other similar items on slides under a microscope.
“Congratulations, Your Honor. You just identified something I picked out of my teeth after lunch as a child.”
It’s not even Biblical. The punishment for a man who harmed a pregnant woman if she ended up hurt but otherwise OK but the fetus died would only owe a fine because no life was lost.
Oh don’t worry, they aren’t interested in people who have actually been born having rights and protections.
I doubt very much that the couples who sought IVF treatments will be able to claim these frozen embryos as dependents for tax purposes or that the state government is going to count them on any census.
So this isn’t even really about extending human rights and protections to embryos. It’s solely about taking away the reproductive rights of people (especially women) seeking medical treatment.
No, they won’t. This is just about that wrongful death statute. Which, as you point out, will have a chilling effect on reproductive rights because it will likely mean no company will provide IVF services in Alabama. It’s too risky.
No kidding. I just explained to my children why they would not have been born if our state had the legal framework Alabama just put in place.
I wonder if anyone explained that to the women who filed that lawsuit. I understand their anger at the recklessness that led to the destruction of their embryos, but there are other grounds on which they could have sued.
University of Alabama in Birmingham, Alabama’s largest health system, announced they are suspending IVF treatment immediately because the standard of care involved puts them and patients at risk of criminal prosecution.
Nikki Haley has just weighed in.
The “embryos are babies” crowd is even dumber and more afactual than the “abortion is the same thing as killing babies” crowd. An embryo isn’t even the same thing as a fetus, let alone the same thing as a baby. A single embryo has the potential to become a human being, or even two or more human beings in the case of identical twins, but the majority of embryos inside and outside of the womb become nothing at all because at least half of them never even make it to the implantation stage.
The GOP has already alienated everyone who recognizes a woman’s right to end her own pregancy. Now they’re alienating countless would-be parents who are desperately trying to get pregnant.
It’s almost like they aren’t actually for or against pregnancy, they just hate women making the choice.
