More Political Interference in Reproductive Rights

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Reproductive rights were in the news again last week when a group of Cracker Jack lawyers calling itself the Supreme Court of Alabama issued a ruling declaring that frozen human embryos are de facto human babies and deserve the same rights and protections that Alabama hopefully gives to its babies who have passed through a birth canal and are now breathing air.  A day or so later GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley, a married Christian mother of two grown children, entered the discussion by saying that she also regards human embryos as babies.

In vitro fertilization is a procedure in which eggs are removed from a woman's ovary and combined with sperm cells outside the body to form embryos.  The embryos are grown in the laboratory for several days and then placed in a woman's uterus or cryopreserved (frozen) for future use.  The overall process is generally referred to as IVF.

Last week's decision by the Alabama Supreme Court was in response to couples who lost their frozen embryos because of an accident in a south Alabama storage facility.  The court said that the couples could sue under the state's wrongful death law.  That sent shock waves through hospitals and laboratories involved in IVF, and three Alabama hospitals - including the University of Alabama Hospital - have since announced that they will no longer be involved in IVF procedures until the law is clarified and personnel involved in the procedures have legal protections.

IVF is a fairly common procedure used by couples who encounter difficulties in procreating.  There are currently an estimated 800,000 to one million frozen embryos in the United States.

Politicians, and Republican politicians in particular, who often have an outsized interest in reproductive issues, and who have generally been opposed to procedures like abortion, surrogacy, and even birth control, seem to have been caught off guard by the wide public support of IVF, and many are now scrambling to get onboard with the well established medical process.   Donald Trump, a politician who reportedly favors a national abortion ban, has sprung to the defense of IVF and called on the Alabama state legislature to pass a law safeguarding the procedure.   Joe Biden, a more ardent supporter of reproductive rights than Trump, has called the decision by the Alabama Supreme Court "outrageous and unacceptable."

With the Big Kahunas of both major political parties spurning the Alabama decision, perhaps it will be legislated away before the elderly politicians (of both genders) on the US Supreme Court feel compelled to weigh in - and God only knows what type of egg they would hatch!    A quick legislative solution at the national level would be ideal, but, of course, the current Congress is one of the most ineffective in the history of the republic, so a remedy from them is unlikely.   The impending lack of a quick, national solution opens a whole Pandora's box of other issues.

If a frozen embryo has a right to life, what other rights does it have?  Should it have representation in government as a person - or perhaps as a "partial" person as the Founding Fathers originally deemed slaves in America to be?  Will it have a right to legal counsel or public assistance in the event it is abandoned by its donors?

It is truly a shame that our political leaders do not take the same level of interest in meeting the basic needs of living, breathing children as they do the "babies" in the freezer.