More Unintended Consequences

When the Right Wing/Conservative majority US Supreme Court, struck down a nationwide right to abortion in 2022, by overturning Roe v Wade, the law which had guaranteed the constitutional right to abortion up to the point of foetal viability (about 23-25 weeks), it was only a matter of time before some US states would go further in their local laws.

Women's Rights, Are Human Rights

So the news, that in Alabama, the state Supreme Court has now ruled that frozen embryos are considered to be 'children' and that a person could now be held to be legally liable, for accidentally destroying them, should not be a real surprise to anyone .... after all that's been the direction of travel all along.

The Alabama Supreme Court ruling, has now opened up the fear that IVF treatment will no longer be available in the state, as physicians and technical staff could possibly face massive punitive fines/damages or even murder charges, if an embryo is destroyed, damaged, or possibly even if it fails to take in the womb ... no one knows the exact scope of this ruling.

The University of Alabama in Birmingham, the US state's largest hospital and several other IVF providers, have now suspended their in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) services, in order to evaluate their legal position, and may now cease to offer the service to couples (although they are still taking eggs for freezing). The legal decision has caused them all concerns about whether some aspects of the IVF process and procedures are now still legal under Alabama law. For instance, if all embryo's are now considered a person in Alabama, how the clinics are currently allowed to collect, use store and dispose of them, could now be ruled illegal.

Elisabeth Smith, director of state policy at the Centre for Reproductive Rights, has pointed out that "Not all [IVF] embryos are used, nor can they be."  This fact raises the question of how the unwanted fertilised embryo eggs are disposed of when no longer required ... that's assuming that its only when fertilisation via sperm has occurred, that they are now legally deemed 'persons'. 

This is because fertilisation usually takes place at the point when the egg embryo's are retrieved, and several days before they are to be implanted in to a womb, but crucially, not all are implanted after being fertilised (clinics stop when one or two are successfully implanted ... they don't want cases of multiple births). However, if fertilised eggs are now deemed as children (whilst sperm isn't?), then IVF treatment must surely be impossible, because the embryo's can't be disposed of as they are legally children?

So I find it ironic, that so-called "Pro Lifers" have now possibly stopped the creation of life for childless couples .... but as they don't do irony, that will be lost on them. I suspect that many of the pro-lifers actually think that IVF treatment is not godly either, and so won't be too upset if IVF is forced to stop in the state, or even nationally.

But in any case, they actually use 'God' to justify the decision, with Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Parker writing (in judgement?): "Even before birth, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory." ... WTF? .... are they using the Bible to set laws in Alabama?

The conservative Christian legal group, 'The Alliance Defending Freedom', (but not apparently freedom of choice for women ... there's that irony thing again), has described the Alabama ruling as a "Tremendous victory for life. No matter the circumstances, all human life is valuable from the moment of conception," its spokeswoman Denise Burke said: "We are grateful the Court correctly found that Alabama law recognises this fundamental truth."  

However Jessica Andreae, director of operations of the pro-life ProLove Ministries recognised the dilemma the court ruling had created, as whilst she agreed that embryos should be considered human life, but added that it "is a very complex issue for me. I have a friend who has two dear children through fertility treatment," she said. "And any human life, however it's brought into this world, is a gift."

Some right-wing politicians have also piled in, such as Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley
who hypocritically endorsed the Alabama Supreme Court's decision on Thursday. "Embryos to me are babies," she said. "When you talk about an embryo, you are talking about, to me, that's life, and so I do see where that's coming from when they talk about that." ..... Ms Haley, used IVF fertility treatments to have her own two children. She didn't make the distinction between fertilised eggs or non fertilised egg embryo's .... a question that is not clearly answered in the news reports, but it appears to only be fertilised embryo's.

However, a number of Republicans have realised what an electoral disaster this could become with a pew survey last year indicating that forty-two percent of Americans have either used IVF treatments or known someone who did ... and the majority of them being white voters (the demographic that usually votes Republican). So they have started rowing away from the ruling .... moderate Republican (is there such a thing under Trump?), New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu declared the Alabama ruling "scary" but others such as Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina just played the 'dumb' card by claiming that he had not "studied the issue" ... this from a potential Trump presidential running mate (god help America if this idiot is one bullet away from the Presidency).

Ms Haley, having initially rejoiced in the decision has now realised how damaging the ruling could be amongst white middle and higher earning voters, and in a CNN interview said that while embryos should be protected, that Alabama "needs to go back and look at the law" ... "We don't want fertility treatments to shut down. We don't want them to stop doing IVF treatments."

Hmm, trying to sit on two stools can be tricky as Ms Haley is likely to discover .... Trump has so far said nothing, but can't avoid doing so for long. When you realise that 45% middle-income Americans and 59% higher -income Americans have either used IVF treatments or known someone who did so, then you can see the bind that the Republicans have got in to. 

The Democrats realise this as well, and US Vice-President Kamala Harris accused Republicans of being hypocrites during a stop on her "Fight for Reproductive Freedoms" tour in Grand Rapids, Michigan. "On the one hand, the [pro-life] proponents are saying that an individual doesn't have a right to end an unwanted pregnancy and, on the other hand, the individual does not have the right to start a family."

As an indication of the numbers of people who might no longer be born, if this ruling eventually stopped IVF treatments nationwide, according to the Centre for Disease Control, 97,128 babies were born in the US as a result of IVF treatments in 2021 ... with similar numbers for each year of the preceding decade, and presumably similar or higher numbers expected in the future, before the Alabama ruling .... so millions of future US babies would potentially not be born.

Nationally, polling figures by Pew Research, suggest that most of the American people support abortion in all or most cases (61%), while a minority (37%) say that it should be illegal in all or most cases. But in an increasingly polarised USA, it's now a state by state issue, and therefore follows along Democrat and Republican political lines.

So Democratic candidates usually run on a platform of protecting access to both abortion and fertility treatments across the United States (although some Southern Democrats may side with Christian groups opposed to abortion). Whilst Republican politicians (who are nearly all in thrall to Trump and his conservative far right supporters), will usually all side with the religious 'Christian' conservatives who all want abortion (and IVF treatments) banned or limited in the USA.

Sadly this is yet another example of the law of unintended consequences operating, and also that the US political system is no longer fit for purpose, and needs to be reformed ... some issues such as gun restrictions and  women's rights to what happens to their bodies should be nationally, not locally determined.