Persons
But this isn't just about IVF, it's actually about legally mandating fetal personhood ... a goal of the pro-life movement since its inception ... and it will affect everything from how a woman conducts her pregnancy to her access to abortion and contraception.
The acceptable parameters on this will not come from the majority of citizens in the US, but from the pro-life religiously extreme Christian judges in the Court system. Women will end up with less legal rights than fertilized eggs, and, as is already happening in Red states, their lives will be endangered.
This idea of legal fetal personhood is a construct that makes no sense. Its basis is not science, not law, not even common sense, but a minority religious view. To pretend that an egg or an embryo is entitled to the same legal rights as a person ... something that it may become in time but which it is not now ... is nothing more than a strategy to undermine women.
This isn't about logic or practicality or even about what is right. This is about the pro-life movement's dream, as lived out through the Republican party and their Supreme Court ... creating a theocracy in which women are reduced to subservient breeders.
posted by crystal | 4:36 PM
4 Comments:
I think this is a bad precedent. The thought occurs to me, what happens with the people who already have eggs or embryos frozen in the system in that state? Will they have to have them transferred somewhere else? Is that even possible? If IVF is against the law, can women have their already-harvested embryos implanted if they want to get pregnant? What would really be stupid is if everything is placed on hold, and already existing embryos are basically wasted. But red state legislators are not necessarily known for thinking through the consequences of their actions.
It does seem like a complicated mess. I didn't realize so many people used IVF.
It's difficult to come up with hard statistics, but I am reading that 2% of the live births in the US are the result of IVF. So, not an insignificant number.
Trump. who can see which way the wind is blowing, wants to support IVF. But he has no actual convictions about abortion or IVF or fetal personhood.
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