Frozen embryos are “children,” according to Alabama’s Supreme Court::IVF often produces more embryos than are needed or used.
My wife and I had our son via IVF. We wanted every single one of our fertilized eggs to work, but they didn’t. We had one that did and we suffered every time one didn’t.
Fuck Alabama for adding on to the torment and emotional suffering families going through IVF and any kind of infertility suffer already. It’s just adding unspeakable cruelty again.
I’ve seen my sister going through this process for years. It’s emotionally challenging, financially challenging, and risky to her health. She’s had two ectopic pregnancies and had to be operated on twice. If she manages to have one baby she’ll be happy, and there’s no way it would make sense to implant all the other embryos given the health risk to her. So what would Alabama have her do?
I’m glad she doesn’t live there.
Alabama would have probably let her die with one of the ectopic pregnancies tbh.
I have heard someone say in all seriousness that it’s still murder to abort an ectopic pregnancy (which would just kill the mom and ‘child’ if allowed to continue)…
“But god can save her! If it’s part of his plan they will survive!”
/s if it wasn’t obvious.
I mean the odds aren’t very different for the kid after the procedure. Why can’t God save them after? Not even /s, why don’t they ever have an answer for that? If we’re relying on a miracle anyway, why would an infinitely powerful god need such constrained circumstances to make it work?
Murdering a woman to save a fucking zygote that will never become a human anyway. I’m starting to genuinely hate these people.
Friends of ours were going through something similar - they finally have a viable pregnancy, but it took many tries and failures. Fortunately we live in a state that isn’t controlled by religious nut jobs.
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It takes a massive massive amount of time energy and resources, financial and others, to adopt. Its awful.
Some places don’t allow same sex couples to adopt. Laws around adoption might be weaker, too.
It’s not easy at all.
Based on your post history, you’ll just delete your comment within a few hours anyway, but have you considered that if adoption was such a perfect solution then more people would adopt?
Instead of simply imagining simple solutions to complex problems, maybe try having a bit of empathy and see where that takes you?
Good luck.
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It feels like you’re suggesting that adoption is a panacea, but for a majority of couples, it simply isn’t. I agree it could be considered selfish, but selfishness is a virtue in our society so I am asserting that it should be expected and accounted for, rather than simply waving your hand at its inherent issues and pretending they’ll go away.
Adoption has been proposed and has failed as a satisfactory solution to this problem for millenia, what has changed about it to make it relevant now?
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I haven’t looked into it personally, but from every account I’ve heard, it sounds like a horror show. Admittedly, there’s probably some confirmation bias in there, but I’m also thinking about it from an anthropological perspective.
If adopting a child were equivalent to giving birth to your own child, why would people still go through the torture that is pregnancy? We know that there have been orphanages for centuries, so this seems to be a long running thread in the history of humanity.
From a behavioral economics standpoint, it seems presumptuous to suggest that more couples ought to change their preference from what they’re predisposed to choose naturally, especially without an explanation for why they are likely to have this preference to begin with.
Once you start speculating on the reasons why people prefer adoption only as a fallback option, you’ll likely find that the answer is complicated and personal to every couple, but in aggregate the average couple isn’t thinking about adoption as a plan A.
Even when it comes to same sex couples - they’re working on technology to be able to combine dna from two same sex parents and create an embryo that is truly a child of two people of the same sex.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I’m just thinking of examples where adoption seems to run counter to people’s revealed preferences.
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Someone think of the embryos!
Why the fuck should we ever have to ask a judge this? Hey judge why don’t you tell us how we cure cancer? Judge, judge, what is dark matter? Please, you are the ultimate authority on all things!
It’s stupid but the article says why:
In the Alabama case, a hospital patient wandered through an unlocked door, removed frozen, preserved embryos from subzero storage and, suffering an ice burn, dropped the embryos, destroying them. Affected IVF patients filed wrongful-death lawsuits against the IVF clinic under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. The case was initially dismissed in a lower court, which ruled the embryos did not meet the definition of a child. But the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that “it applies to all children, born and unborn, without limitation.” In a concurring opinion, Chief Justice Tom Parker cited his religious beliefs and quoted the Bible to support the stance.
I know why the courts would ask but in general this is something a single judge has no authority on. The idea that a single person gets to define what “life” is absurdity. We have army’s of scholars following strict rules of logic, ethics, and are backed by science. Their consensus is more compatible with human society than some dusty book.
Absurdity indeed!
Well get used to it because the US Supreme Court is about to (probably) do away with Chevron deference.
A group of Alabama residents decide to rob a bank. They put on their ski masks, grab their guns, run in, yell for everyone to get down and they start looking for the vault. They ransack every office, but all they find are some fancy coolers. Tired from the search and hot from wearing ski masks in Alabama, they open one of them up to find a bunch of cool refreshing yogurt. They drink it, cool off a bit, and then they go looking for the manager. They find this nice looking guy in a suit and tie:
“Hey, are you the manager of this bank?”, they yell, pointing a gun at his face.
“Yes sir, I am”, the guy is shaking and scared, but tries to keep calm.
“Take us to your vault, right fucking now!”
“Vault? Sir this is a sperm bank”
Cannibalism is getting trendy again
Not sure exactly what companies store these frozen embryos, but if the company closes or you pass. How are the embryos disposed of?
Does the company need to keep them frozen and alive indefinitely? Or is it murder if they are terminated by the company? What happens if the freezers/cooler breaks? Who is responsible for the now classified murder?
The woman. It’s always the woman in christian fundamentalism.
This is an infuriating aspect of this case. The courts could have held the clinic responsible for this loss without declaring that all frozen embryos are children by invoking the “prime mover” concept. Other courts have used it in, for example, surrogacy cases. In short, that concept holds that it’s the intent of the parent(s) that matters, as the prime movers in the process of bringing a child into the world, not just the mixing of some genetic material. Those destroyed embryos could have become children, as it was the parents’ intention to do so. And if nobody intends to implant embryos, for whatever reason, without the intent to make a child, they’re merely organic material, neatly sidestepping those questions.
But, of course, the court wanted to impose its religious orthodoxy rather than issue a sensible ruling. Now we have those thorny questions.
Should be a gofundme paid for by the morons who support this nonsense. It would be excruciating expensive, too.
In the UK you pay a monthly fee to keep a frozen egg.
This is according to a friend who had it done:
If the treatment worked and there were embryos left over, they waited X amount of time, I think a year or so, and if they don’t hear anything from you then they are destroyed.
My friend said she got a reminder but didn’t want to think about it, that it was too hard, so she never responded and assumes they’re gone. She said that to her, she never told them to do it, and that helps her if she ever thinks about it. She ended up having twins.
I love how the chief justice cites his god as his legal argument. What a sham. The god of the Bible has, thus far, failed to prove its legitimacy in any context, especially regarding a secular legal system.
Nevermind forcing his god onto the rest of the population. If these yoyos get far enough, they’ll start sending non believers to “reeducation camps.”
I would think his reference to god would be a sufficient argument to nullify his decision? As you said the US justice system is secular.
Secular in theory, but lots of key elements have been taken over by religious nutjobs, so in practice it often isn’t.
I don’t even care how retarded his logic is, it’s inherently not allowed because we’re supposed to have church state separation. That is the worst part to me.
Then they should count as dependents, grant the parents tax breaks, be eligible for social benefits, receive child support payments, be counted as passengers when in mom driving in HOV lanes, etc.
Holy shit storing embryos frozen and counting them as dependants would be an actual life hack
Pretty sure that’s expensive as hell
So are actual children.
That’s why I freeze dried mine and keep them in the glove compartment for use in the HOV lane.
11k to 15k starting cost plus 400 to 600 a year.
So when talking about thousands of dollars of tax credit it might have a good ROI. The initial cost could probably be lower if the actual quality doesn’t matter to you.
I was under the impression the yearly fee was much higher, but maybe I was co flaring it with the cycle cost of IVF which can reach 30k.
We almost got this with Alabama 2023 bill HB182 which would grant unborn children as dependents on taxes. The bill didn’t pass. These people want children to count only when dolling out punishments.
Does this mean I can claim my sperm as a dependent on my taxes?
“What’s all this stuff in the freezer!?!”
“Sperm.”
We had I think six eggs harvested and fertilized, of those I think two made it to blastocyst, meaning the cells doubled as they should by day five. The four that didn’t double correctly were discarded. Did we commit 4 murders? Or does it not count if the embryo doesn’t make it to blastocyst? We did genetic testing on the two that were fertilized, one is normal and the other came back with all manner of horrible deformities. We implanted the healthy one, and discarded the genetically abnormal one. I assume that was another murder. Should we have just stored it indefinitely? We would never use it, can’t destroy it, so what do? What happens after we die?
I know the answer is probably it wasn’t god’s will for us to have kids, all IVF is evil, blah blah blah. It really freaks me out sometimes how much of the country is living in the 1600s.
Whether you committed murder or not is directly correlated to the amount of money you have and whether you are in the in-group.
Even before this I would get really pissed when people casually said “It will happen when the time is right. God has a plan, though it isn’t one we understand.” In Alabama I was recently at the dentist, getting my teeth cleaned to the tune of religious music, hearing the hygienist say this bullshit to me.
Time to find a different dentist. They might think cavities are just God’s will.
Christians are such fucking idiots.
Excuse me but I’ve never met a xtian that fucking intelligent.
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Muslims don’t believe that life starts at conception. So no, on this topic they are not as idiotic as Christians.
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Turkey and Kazakhstan. And this is just racist bs. Not all Muslims hate Jews or have regressive views. Not to mention this is all off topic, it’s Christians who are trying to destroy women’s rights in America not Muslims
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Turkey isn’t much worse than countries like Hungary or Poland when it comes to democracy. And Kazakhstan is in the middle of democratic reform
Also I like how you ignored the rest of my comment. But not surprised
Edit: and people were shitting on Christianity because Christians have huge amounts of power in the US. Far more than Muslims do in any western country. It’s Christians trying to destroy secular rights in the West. You brought up Muslims for no reason other than to deflect
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Albania? Kosovo? Indonesia?
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Simple minded fool.
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I don’t recall anyone asking who is worse.
So… all acorns are trees.
Does this mean cops are gonna start shooting trees now?
No, they’ll flash bang the little trees.
Oh god. I know people that do this already and call it “target practice”.
Shoot at dead items ffs
Only when the tree shoots first
Just wait until everyone on the state gets IVF treatments but never implants them, dozens of dependants claimed on their tax forms for free!
Wait, if I move there, as a man, can I claim millions of dependents? I mean they’re just unborn, they count right?
What about all of someone’s future unborn grandchildren and great grandchildren and great great grandchildren? Public policy now requires fortune telling to see what deductions one is eligible for based on future events?
Well you’d need a partner to have a viable embryo, but maybe you could adopt some freezer babies?
Women of America. Get a freezer. Freeze your eggs and transport them home. On all future taxes claim them as dependents in perpetuity. Fuck these asshats. Game the system and make bank!
Every woman with a frozen embryo.
Get those child tax credits.
Don’t have frozen embryos? Freeze some
Get those child tax credits
That is not legal. They have made embryos children when looking for people to put in jail, and not children when looking to give out benefits. Very convenient for the state budget!
