Ah. By all reports, the destruction of zygotes that led to this case was accidental, not intentional. So “intentional infliction of emotional distress” was certainly off the table, no matter how the court ruled.
Basic report of the destruction:
They allege that in 2020, a patient at the Mobile, Ala., hospital where the frozen embryos were being stored, walked into the fertility clinic through an “unsecured doorway” and removed several embryos from the cryogenic nursery, the state’s Supreme Court ruling said. The patient’s hand was “freeze-burned” by the extremely low temperatures the embryos were stored at, and the patient dropped the containers on the floor, destroying the embryos within, according to the ruling.
Sounds like a miscarriage or justice.
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it’s interesting how quickly many republicans are scrambling to support ivf, especially in alabama.
also notable how the roman catholic church is agains ivf. this is probably because they tend to be logically consistent. and that is where this view of personhood leads.
if you aren’t so sure that personhood begins at conception then it’s much trickier to decide when it begins. perhaps the certainty to justify government coercion, and political alliances, disappears.
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More precisely, Republicans are scrambling to say that they support ivf. In actual practice, 124 Republicans in the House are cosponsors of a bill that declares life begins at conception. The House bill does not contain an exception for IVF, although the corresponding Senate bill does, so clearly the issue was considered when drafting the bill.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/431/cosponsors?s=1&r=67
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I really dislike that “life starts when…” language.
It confuses two really different meanings.
The newer meaning of life is a scientifically observable property.
The older, philosophical meaning is something closer to creative motion, or soul when applied to a person.
So science tells us life of a kind starts at conception. But that notion of life doesn’t distinguish between the fetus and, say, some muscle plug cultures started in a lab.
Through the magic of homonyms the life of the scientist becomes the life of the theologian.
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I’ve seen I don’t know how many conservatives on Twitter saying “I strongly support IVF for parents making the choice to grow their family” with the community note of “This person has sponsored bills that would ban IVF”.
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It’s also worth noting that both Project 2025 and the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI) support fetal personhood. So the 2 largest groups dedicated to making sure that a Trump administration is stocked full of loyalists both support policies that would ban IVF. And Kevin Roberts, the President of the Heritage Foundation (and thus Project 2025) has previously voiced opposition to birth control.
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From elsewhere re: the GOP backtracking on IVF:
Explain to me why exceptions to Dobbs need to be carved out for those seeking 30 thousand dollar IVF treatments but not for 12 year old impregnated incest victims.
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Homonyms are powerful. Judaism holds that a newborn isn’t a person until it takes its first breath. That’s probably because “breath” and “soul” are the same word in Hebrew.
(Also, “life” doesn’t really start at conception. It continues. Both the egg and the sperm were already alive. The egg even has all the parts it needs to develop into a creature, and in some species, a pinprick can trigger it to do so. Human eggs die if they aren’t fertilized, but lots of zygotes die, too.)
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Because the IVF patient is likely to be a well-to-do white woman fulfilling her biological destiny to be a mother, and the 12 year old incest victim might be poor, and might want to make a life for herself that isn’t centered on being a mother.
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Won’t somebody think of the zygotes??? ??? ???
Introduced in the Alabama state legislature:
…although there is apparently some question whether this will pass muster with the state constitution / whether a constitutional amendment will be required.
Ironically, that bill seems to allow for abortions for ectopic pregnancies. I thought Republicans wanted women to be in sepsis and likely imminent death before they’d consider an abortion.
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I don’t think that’s ironic, and i don’t think many people actually want women to continue ectopic pregnancies, even religious right wing Republicans. Heck, the Catholic Church allows abortions in those cases, although they require a certain amount of cover-up. (I think the Church says it’s not okay to kill the embryo, but it is okay to remove the fallopian tube, and it’s just an unfortunate side effect that the embryo dies.)
Admittedly, I was knowingly thinking of Texas.
“They were going to be monitoring me, doing bloodwork every three hours, monitoring my vitals and ‘building a case’ to prove that my life was in great danger and they needed to induce labor,” she said.
“I was crying, asking for help. And I remember them literally not saying anything. [The doctors and nurses] would just literally look at me and look at Stephen and they’re just blank. There’s literally nothing they could do,” Anaya said.
Despite a dilation and evacuation procedure being more effective at removing all the fetal tissue and the placenta, according to Gariepy, Anaya said she was only offered a labor induction.
The placenta usually detaches itself once a pregnancy is full term. By inducing labor and not performing the surgical procedure there is a risk the placenta will not be delivered, Gariepy said. “There’s a 25% chance of still needing surgery [after induction] because the placenta get stuck,” Gariepy said. Even after receiving four rounds of induction medication, Anaya’s placenta was not delivered, according to her medical records. She has since needed two dilation and curettage procedures to remove the placenta and stop her bleeding. The first was during her five-day hospital stay.
(I know this story is not an ectopic pregnancy, but my understanding is that Texas doesn’t care.)
It’s true that Texas law requires women to be on the brink of death to get an abortion. But i don’t think that’s consistent with popular opinion, even among those who support the Texas law. I think they feel it’s an unfortunate side effect of a law they like for other reasons.
And some who support the law deny that’s even required by the law. Sure, they are happy to charge a gynecologist with murder after she saves her client’s life, but that’s because this case was special.
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What you are referring to as cover-up is a question of intent. If the intent is to save the life of the woman that’s good intent. If the intent is to kill the child, that is bad intent. An action can have more than one outcome, and it is necessary that the good outcome(s) must be the one(s) willed for the action to be good.
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Yeah, that’s an issue.
Sec. 36.06
SANCTITY of unborn life.
(a) This state acknowledges, declares, and affirms that it is the public policy of this state to recognize and support the SANCTITY of unborn life and the rights of unborn children, including the right to life.
(b) This state further acknowledges, declares, and affirms that it is the public policy of this state to ensure the protection of the rights of the unborn child in all manners and measures lawful and appropriate.
(c) Nothing in this constitution secures or protects a right to abortion or requires the funding of an abortion.
The state supreme court said that a fertilized egg in a dish is and “unborn child”.
“Section 36.06 recognizes that this is true of unborn human life no less than it is of all other human life – that even before birth, all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory”
… Even before birth, all human beings bear the image of God, unless they’re extras, then thou shalt throw them in the garbage
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