Frozen embryos are “children,” according to Alabama’s Supreme Court::IVF often produces more embryos than are needed or used.

  • @BaronVonBort@lemmy.world
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    1481 year ago

    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.

    • @essteeyou@lemmy.world
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      441 year ago

      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.

        • Jojo
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          241 year ago

          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)…

            • Jojo
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              1 year ago

              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?

          • @rambaroo@lemmy.world
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            31 year ago

            Murdering a woman to save a fucking zygote that will never become a human anyway. I’m starting to genuinely hate these people.

      • @limelight79@lemm.ee
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        11 year ago

        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.

      • @Wahots@pawb.social
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        151 year ago

        Some places don’t allow same sex couples to adopt. Laws around adoption might be weaker, too.

      • 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.

          • 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?

              • @unconfirmedsourcesDOTgov@lemmy.sdf.org
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                -11 year ago

                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.

  • @Daft_ish@lemmy.world
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    181 year ago

    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!

    • @nymwit@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • @Daft_ish@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • prole
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      21 year ago

      Well get used to it because the US Supreme Court is about to (probably) do away with Chevron deference.

  • @Skates@feddit.nl
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    1 year ago

    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”

  • @NarrativeBear@lemmy.world
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    181 year ago

    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?

    • @SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social
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      11 year ago

      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.

    • @Wahots@pawb.social
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      31 year ago

      Should be a gofundme paid for by the morons who support this nonsense. It would be excruciating expensive, too.

    • @PrincessLeiasCat@sh.itjust.works
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      61 year ago

      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.

  • @SteelCorrelation@lemmy.one
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    981 year ago

    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.

    • @bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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      331 year ago

      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.”

    • @erwan@lemmy.ml
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      331 year ago

      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.

    • @JustUseMint@lemmy.world
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      41 year ago

      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.

  • @carl_dungeon@lemmy.world
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    1031 year ago

    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.

  • @NevermindNoMind@lemmy.world
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    441 year ago

    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.

    • @TORFdot0@lemmy.world
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      141 year ago

      Whether you committed murder or not is directly correlated to the amount of money you have and whether you are in the in-group.

    • @TellusChaosovich@lemmy.world
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      21 year ago

      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.

      • Anise (they/she)
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        21 year ago

        Time to find a different dentist. They might think cavities are just God’s will.

  • Monkey With A Shell
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    231 year ago

    Just wait until everyone on the state gets IVF treatments but never implants them, dozens of dependants claimed on their tax forms for free!

      • Anise (they/she)
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        21 year ago

        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?

      • Monkey With A Shell
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        21 year ago

        Well you’d need a partner to have a viable embryo, but maybe you could adopt some freezer babies?

  • @whoisearth@lemmy.ca
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    491 year ago

    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!

  • @Facebones@reddthat.com
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    751 year ago

    Every woman with a frozen embryo.

    Get those child tax credits.

    Don’t have frozen embryos? Freeze some

    Get those child tax credits

    • @TellusChaosovich@lemmy.world
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      191 year ago

      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!