More than a third of states consider fetuses to be people at some point during pregnancy. Any one of them could be the next Alabama. Read more at Politico
The position of the North Carolina GOP under Whatley on embryos mirrors a recent decision by the Alabama Supreme Court. On February 16, Alabama’s highest court ruled that frozen embryos are “children” — entitled to the same legal protections as an infant or a third grader. This was based on a religious conviction of when … Read more
Tom Parker, a Republican who joined the court in 2005, wrote a concurring opinion that quoted at length from sources such as the Book of Genesis, the Ten Commandments and Christian thinkers of centuries ago, such as Thomas Aquinas. But comments he has made in other media have raised questions about his seeming espousal of … Read more
“He framed it entirely assuming that the state of Alabama is a theocracy, and that that is a legitimate way of evaluating laws and policies,” said Julie Ingersoll, a University of North Florida professor who studies religion and culture. “It looks like he decided to just dismiss the history of first amendment religious freedom jurisprudence … Read more
‘A Quandary’: Republicans Hesitant To Back Federal Protections For IVF On the one hand, Republicans maintain that they support the continued use of IVF, calling it both pro-family and pro-life. But on the other hand, many in the GOP agree with the central premise of the ruling that found that frozen embryos are children with … Read more
Johnson’s name appears smack-dab in the middle of a list of 125 House Republicans co-sponsoring the Life at Conception Act, which was introduced in January 2023 as an anti-abortion bill after failing to pass earlier sessions of Congress. The bill’s language does not include any exceptions for IVF. Read more at HuffPost
The plans are already beginning to take shape. As previously reported by Rolling Stone, Republicans have floated enforcing the Comstock Act, a zombie law from the 19th century, to criminalize the inter-state shipping of abortion medication. The outdated law also includes broad prohibitions on the mailing of materials considered “obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy, or … Read more
“We’re legislating malpractice – we’re saying, ‘You don’t use your normal medical principles, all the training you went through, all your experience’ – we’re just tossing it out to this arbitrary idea that doesn’t have a biological basis,” said Chen. Read more at The Guardian
“Today, in 2024 in America, women are being turned away from emergency rooms and forced to travel hundreds of miles for health care, while doctors fear prosecution for providing an abortion. And now, a court in Alabama put access to some fertility treatments at risk for families who are desperately trying to get pregnant,” he … Read more
Second Alabama provider stops IVF care after court deems embryos ‘children’ A second Alabama provider announced that it will pause its in-vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments on Thursday, just days after the state supreme court ruled in a first-of-its-kind decision that embryos are “extrauterine children”. Read more at The Guardian Three Alabama clinics pause IVF services … Read more
