The University of Alabama at Birmingham health system is no longer performing in vitro fertilization procedures for fear of criminal prosecution following an Alabama Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos have the same status as children in wrongful death lawsuits.
The decision, which will likely have wide-ranging implications for IVF clinics in and beyond Alabama, is a devastating blow to the 1 in 6 couples who experience infertility.
“Disbelief, denial, all the stages of grief,” Dr. Michael C. Allemand, a reproductive endocrinologist at Alabama Fertility, told the Associated Press. “I was stunned.”
Legal scholars expect the ruling to be replicated in other states.
“I think there’s been a broader strategy — the sort of next Roe v. Wade, if you will — for the anti-abortion movement,” UC Davis law professor Mary Ziegler told NPR after the ruling. “I think you’ll see the anti-abortion movement making a gradual case that the more state courts — the more state laws — recognize a fetus or embryo as a person for different circumstances and reasons, the more compelling they can say is the case for fetal personhood under the Constitution.”
Justices on Alabama’s court cited language in the Alabama Constitution recognizing the “rights of the unborn child” in response to three couples suing for wrongful death when their frozen embryos were accidentally destroyed while in storage.
“Even before birth,” Alabama Chief Justice Tom Parker wrote, “all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.”
What an interesting way to communicate that we value the rights and lives and wellbeing of children in this country.
And by interesting I mean hypocritical and hollow.
The poverty rate for children in the United States now stands at 12% — more than double what it was in 2021. That’s thanks in large part to Congress allowing pandemic relief programs, including the expanded Child Tax Credit, to expire.
One in four children now lives in poverty in New York City, our nation’s largest city. One in four children, that is, struggle to access basic necessities.
Guns kill children in this country at an astounding, appalling rate. More than any disease kills children. More than automobile accidents kill children. The gun-death rate for children here is around five in every 100,000.
We have watched children be slaughtered at parades, in schools, on playgrounds and on sidewalks, and we have yet to enact the sort of sweeping legislative change that would prevent it from happening over and over and over again. We can’t even agree on something as basic as universal background checks.
“We’re not going to fix it,” Rep. Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee, said from the steps of the U.S. Capitol the same day a gunman killed six people at The Covenant School, a parochial elementary school in Nashville.
Meanwhile, the U.S. spends 0.2% of its gross domestic product on care for children 2 and under, which comes to about $200 a year for most families. Norway spends close to $30,000 annually per child. Germany spends more than $18,000 per year.
American parents receive zero weeks of government-mandated paid parental leave, unlike parents in 40 other nations. One in four moms returns to work within two weeks of giving birth here, according to Department of Labor statistics.
Where is the energy, the passion and the policymaking to protect and defend children once they enter the world, in all of its harsh, complicated, unpredictable, dangerous glory?
The Alabama ruling and the subsequent rulings it paves the way for aren’t about protecting the lives of children. They’re about dogma. They’re about restricting women’s bodily autonomy. They’re about blurring what’s left of the line separating church and state and remaking this nation in the image of a vocal, energized minority.
A quote by pastor David Barnhart made the rounds on social media shortly before the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade. Barnhart, who’s from Saint Junia United Methodist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, originally wrote this in 2018, according to Snopes.com.
It’s worth revisiting now. Again.
“The unborn are a convenient group of people to advocate for,” Barnhart wrote. “They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn.
“You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus, but actually dislike people who breathe. Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.”
But actually dislike people who breathe. A powerful line, and a hard one to dispute when you look at what our policies and practices prioritize and, more importantly, what they don’t.
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