Human fertilization and the SCOTUS

 The premise that “human life begins at fertilization” has never made sense. Human sperm and human oocytes are human life and they are alive prior to fertilization. Human life is a continuum, made possible by the continuity of the human germ line. Sometimes, the defenders of the fertilization add “unique human life,” but thanks to meiotic recombination and independent assortment, every sperm and every egg is unique, human and alive.

Biological ignorance nowithstanding, the “human life begins at fertilization” argument has two practical consequences: (1) it renders in vitro fertilization impractical and (2) it makes any woman who terminates a pregnancy at any point after fertilization an accessory to first degree murder.

 

In the case of IVF, the practical reality is the multiple fertilization products, each potentially capable of implantation and gestation to birth, are generated and frozen. At this point, hundreds of thousands if not millions of these “babies,” in the parlance of the pro-forced birth mob, are in suspended animation and will eventually have to be destroyed for want of money to keep them. But anyone who discards them will be, ipso facto, guilty of 1st degree murder in the eyes of the reproductive extremists.

So far, the criminalization of abortion has focused on the doctors and clinics that perform or facilitate the abortion, and has exempted the woman who has arranged the termination. If I hire someone to kill my neighbor, designate the date and time of their death, and pay in full afterwards, would US law absolve me of any responsibility, just because I didn’t pull the trigger? Of course not.

And yet:

 

“For years, mainstream anti-abortion activists have avoided including discarded embryos created in the in vitro fertilization process in their crusade to protect every embryo, in part because seeking to curtail IVF treatment would be very unpopular. In Alabama, which has passed a near-total ban on abortion, embryos created through IVF are excepted from the law.”

 

And

“Asked whether doctors who perform abortion ought to be criminalized, she said: “We support the criminalization of the doctors who perform abortions. At this point we are not supportive of criminalizing the women. We would be supportive of criminalizing the discarding of frozen embryos or selective reduction through the IVF process.””

These people are nuts. A fertilized egg is not equivalent to a baby. But this is the belief system of the latest SCOTUS candidate.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/01/amy-coney-barrett-supported-group-fertilization

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Two sides

Image
  Yes, there are two sides to every question. In most cases, there is a correct side and a wrong side. In the case of Kamala Harris, the correct side is that she was born a US citizen. The wrong side is that her parents had to be citizens or permanent residents for her to be a citizen. President Trump pretended to be unsure about this, just as he pretended for five years that Barack Obama is not a citizen. In the case of the Harris noncitizen claim, it is backed by the racist C laremont Institute: "The Claremont Institute masquerades as an intellectual salon of the right, but it is really just a racist fever swamp with deep connections to the conspiratorial alt-right. It even granted a fellowship to Jack Posobiec, who helped promote the notorious Pizzagate conspiracy theory. Claremont’s resident bigots offer deranged fantasies of violently expelling Americans from their home country because of their ethnic backgrounds. Their work deserves the intellectual weight given to that of D...
Read more

Who chooses?

Over at jabberwocking.com , Kevin Drum blames pro-choice writers for failing to make the case for reproductive choice. Well, from everything I've read, a clear majority of Americans believe that Roe should still stand. Seems like the case has been made, and if we lived in a truly representative democracy, a limited national right to abortion would be preserved. But beyond that reality, I think Drum has it exactly backwards. Why does the burden of proof fall on those advocating for personal autonomy? Seems to me the null hypothesis is that women should be allowed to make decisions about their own health, and that the justification for nanny state intrusion into such decisions rests with the minority who assert state coercion. Democrats need to hammer on the right-wing GOP to explain why the government takes temporary custody of pregnant Americans. https://jabberwocking.com/liberals-really-suck-at-defending-abortion/
Read more

Black Earth

 Just finished reading “Black Earth: The Holocaust as history and warning” by Timothy Snyder. It is a detailed account of the Holocaust, as well as an effort to abstract lessons from this history for our time. Like his book “Bloodlands,” Snyder’s “Black Earth” makes for painful reading. As the grandson of a Ukrainian Jew and the son of a Jew, I would have been targeted in the Holocaust had I been in the wrong place. I had read several histories of Europe in World War II that included the Holocaust. I knew the basic story of the Holocaust and Hitler’s anti-Semitic vision. I learned a great deal by reading this book. I won’t belabor the ghoulish atrocities committed by the Nazis and their collaborators. To summarize them here would be to trivialize the enormity of the crimes and invite pointless debate about who did what and who suffered more. You’ll have to read the book to understand Snyder’s historical insights. However, I learned many things that I did not know by reading thi...
Read more