Obviously, the Alabama Supreme Court actually putting fetal personhood into law is another victory for creeping Christian Authoritarianism and yet another attack on health care, womens' rights, and bodily autonomy....but watching the Republicans flip their shit now that IVF clinics are in danger of closing is hilarious in a "the clown car is on fire" kind of way.

Because of course this was going to happen. Fetal personhood and anti-surrogacy (especially in the context of same-sex parents) has been bouncing around in conservative religious and legal circles (but what's the difference?) for decades, with those pesky liberals warning about it for just as long. Anyone with an inkling of awareness of the issue could have seen it coming.

So the fact that they were caught so off guard is myopic enough. And they're panicking for a very good reason, because yanno who generally goes to IVF clinics?

The people who can afford it.

Certainly the abortion bans in various states were bad, but if you had a lot of disposable income you could just...go to another state. Extremely inconvenient, yes, but not insurmountable. But this?

Oh my god, now the far-right pro-life politics that you've been cultivating for going on fifty years is now in a position to affect people with money? People that matter? Now you have to try and contend with the very extremist judges you installed that don't have to worry about getting elected and whose decisions are now putting you on the political chopping block?

Join us the in misery you're created for everyone else, assholes.

Last month’s Alabama Supreme Court ruling on IVF was a huge blow to reproductive healthcare. 

Between IVF decisions at the state-level in Alabama and subsequent actions by the U.S. Congress, here’s a reminder that elections have consequences — and your VOTE is your VOICE.

This year, as many as 13 states may have reproductive healthcare-related measures on their ballot. Make sure you’re registered to vote NOW, then remind three friends to check their registration, too at weall.vote/register.

^^^ Be careful how you word things in Alabama!

Be even more careful how you vote. The only way to protect reproductive freedom is to Vote Democratic.

Spending all your rent money at a casino is a better bet than voting for a third party. At least at the casino you have a remote chance of success.

If frozen embryos are children, then doesn't that also mean sperm are children? So, every single dirty republikkkan that masturbates into a sock or whatever, is also a child murderer.

One week after the federal government made it easier to get abortion pills, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said Tuesday that women in Alabama who use those pills to end pregnancies could be prosecuted.

That’s despite wording in Alabama’s new Human Life Protection Act that criminalizes abortion providers and prevents its use against the people receiving abortions. Instead, the attorney general’s office said Alabama could rely on an older law, one initially designed to protect children from meth lab fumes.

“The Human Life Protection Act targets abortion providers, exempting women ‘upon whom an abortion is performed or attempted to be performed’ from liability under the law,” Marshall said in an emailed statement. “It does not provide an across-the-board exemption from all criminal laws, including the chemical-endangerment law—which the Alabama Supreme Court has affirmed and reaffirmed protects unborn children.”

The announcement followed changes last week to regulations of two medications commonly prescribed for abortion. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration finalized a change that will allow brick-and-mortar and mail-order pharmacies to dispense mifepristone and misoprostol, two drugs used in more than half of abortions in the United States.

Before the change, people using medication for abortions had to pick it up at specialty clinics. Officials at the U.S. Department of Justice issued an opinion that carriers with the U.S. Postal Service could deliver pills in states that banned abortion. The new rules will expand access through telehealth and mail-order pharmacies but could set up clashes with anti-abortion states such as Alabama.

Marshall has said in the past his office could prosecute doctors with U.S. Veterans Affairs who perform abortions for victims of rape or incest. He has also said people who assist in setting up out-of-state abortions could face criminal penalties. This is the first time he has said police and prosecutors could arrest women who have undergone medication abortion.

“Promoting the remote prescription and administration of abortion pills endangers both women and unborn children,” Marshall said in an email. “Elective abortion—including abortion pills—is illegal in Alabama. Nothing about the Justice Department’s guidance changes that. Anyone who remotely prescribes abortion pills in Alabama does so at their own peril: I will vigorously enforce Alabama law to protect unborn life.”

In 2019, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed the Human Life Protection Act, which banned abortion except in cases where the mother’s health is in danger. That law went into effect when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade last summer.

The law specifically states that women receiving abortions cannot be held criminally liable. However, Marshall said women using pills to induce abortions could be prosecuted under the chemical endangerment law.

Lawmakers passed the chemical endangerment law in 2006 to protect small children from fumes and chemicals from home-based meth labs. District attorneys soon began applying the law to protect the fetuses of women who used various drugs during pregnancy. Justices on the Alabama Supreme Court upheld and affirmed prosecutions of pregnant people in 2013 and 2014.

Since then, the law has been used against more than a thousand Alabama women who used drugs during pregnancy. Its enforcement varies widely. District attorneys in some counties rarely apply the law to pregnant women, while others routinely arrest those who use any illegal substance, including marijuana, while pregnant.

The chemical endangerment law has been used to incarcerate women for years who have had miscarriages or stillbirths after using drugs. Etowah County officials jailed pregnant women for months before trial under bond conditions designed to protect fetuses, despite evidence that incarceration increases the risk of pregnancy loss. After the publication of an investigative series in 2015 by ProPublica and Al.com, lawmakers voted to amend the law so it couldn’t be used against women who had lawful prescriptions from doctors.

Attorneys with Pregnancy Justice, a legal organization that represents pregnant women, have fought efforts to criminalize pregnancy and abortion. Emma Roth, a staff attorney at Pregnancy Justice, said prosecutors have already twisted the chemical endangerment law so it can be used against pregnant women. Using the law to go after those who use medications to induce abortions could be unlawful and would undermine the goals of lawmakers who voted for the Human Life Protection Act, she said.

“The Alabama legislature made clear its opposition to any such prosecution when it explicitly exempted patients from criminal liability under its abortion ban,” Roth said in an email. “Yet Alabama prosecutors and courts have shown a willingness to disregard legislative intent time and again in their crusade to criminalize pregnant women. Pregnancy Justice stands ready to challenge any attempt to expand the chemical endangerment statute to criminalize the use of abortion medication.”

JaTaune Bosby Gilchrist, executive director of the ACLU of Alabama, said women have the right to receive prescriptions from out-of-state doctors.

“The ACLU of Alabama is disappointed to learn that Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall is continuing to insert himself into a person’s medical exam room,” Gilchrist said. “Medical decisions should remain the private choice between a patient and doctor. The Alabama Attorney General lacks the jurisdiction to prosecute Alabamians from receiving legal and legitimate medical services prescribed outside the state of Alabama.”

The Ultimate Hypocrisy

The “right to life”.  Such a simple concept, isn’t it?  Living, breathing beings should be protected, and that should include plants, animals, and humans.  And yet … perhaps not so simple after all.  I did not want to write on this topic, at least not yet.  I planned to hold off, see what became of the Alabama Supreme Court decision to call a frozen clump of cells a human being subject to the…

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Unfuckingintended consequences

Me to Alabama: “hey want some chicken?”

AL: “fuck yeah we love chicken!”

Me: -cracks an egg in a skillet-

Egg: -sizzling-

AL: -patiently waiting for chicken-

Egg: -cooked-

Me to AL: here ya go! One chicken!

AL:“wait, I thought—? That’s not chicken? That’s an egg!”

Me: -deadpan stare-

————-

And in case anyone comes at me with the whole “the eggs we eat aren’t fertilized” argument… Mass produced eggs are not generally fertilized but humans can and do regularly eat fertilized eggs. There’s no difference in the taste or nutritional value.

Abortion, Mifepristone, IVF: Reproductive rights and healthcare are under attack across the country — and they are directly impacted by your vote. 

This week, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are considered children, which has already resulted in two fertility clinics in the state pausing their IVF treatment programs. Abortion advocates have been raising the alarm since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. This latest ruling from Alabama is just one of many chilling and devastating attacks on reproductive rights.

However, these attacks didn’t stop voters from showing up to protect their rights at the voting booth — abortion has remained UNDEFEATED at the ballot box in the 2022 Midterms and 2023 Elections. Voters understand that abortion access and reproductive rights are directly impacted by making our voices heard in elections.

Register to vote right NOW at weall.vote/register, then remind 3 friends to do the same.

Even though the percentage of fundamentalist Christians has declined in the United States, the influence of Christian nationalists has increased.

55% of Republicans have Christian nationalist views. That includes House Speaker "MAGA Mike" Johnson who thinks our planet is just over 6,000 years old.

Poll: Most Americans cool to Christian nationalism as its influence grows

Republicans (55%) are more than twice as likely as independents (25%) and three times more likely than Democrats (16%) to hold Christian nationalist views, the survey found. Majorities of two religious groups hold Christian nationalist beliefs: white evangelicals (66%) and Hispanic evangelicals (55%). Both groups are strong supporters of former President Trump, other polls have indicated. Between the lines: Christian nationalism is a set of beliefs centered around white American Christianity's dominance in most aspects of life in the United States. Many Christian nationalists believe the federal government should declare the U.S. a Christian nation. Many also believe U.S. laws should be based on Christian values and that God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society. What they're saying: "It's really a claim for an ethno-religious state, and so there's nothing democratic about that worldview," Robert P. Jones, president and founder of PRRI, tells Axios. Jones said some Christian nationalists view political foes as evil or demonic rather than as fellow citizens with different opinions, and see them as needing to be conquered.

We saw an example of Christian theocracy in the Alabama Supreme Court Decision on in vitro fertilization. The 2022 SCOTUS Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling was theocratic in spirit.

If you think the US should be governed by the Constitution rather than by fundamentalist extremists, Vote Democratic NOT Theocratic.

From CNN: Haley sides with Alabama Supreme Court on IVF ruling: ‘Embryos, to me, are babies’

Allen Mendenhall and Will Sellers on "Success Stories"

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"The Supreme Court on Thursday issued a surprising 5-4 ruling in favor of Black voters in a congressional redistricting case from Alabama, with two conservative justices joining liberals in rejecting a Republican-led effort to weaken a landmark voting rights law.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh aligned with the court’s liberals in affirming a lower-court ruling that found a likely violation of the Voting Rights Act in an Alabama congressional map with one majority Black seat out of seven districts in a state where more than one in four residents is Black. The state now will have to draw a new map for next year’s elections.

The decision was keenly anticipated for its potential effect on control of the closely divided U.S. House of Representatives. Because of the ruling, new maps are likely in Alabama and Louisiana that could allow Democratic-leaning Black voters to elect their preferred candidates in two more congressional districts.

The outcome was unexpected in that the court had allowed the challenged Alabama map to be used for the 2022 elections, and in arguments last October the justices appeared willing to make it harder to challenge redistricting plans as racially discriminatory under the Voting Rights Act of 1965...

The case stems from challenges to Alabama’s seven-district congressional map, which included one district in which Black voters form a large enough majority that they have the power to elect their preferred candidate. The challengers said that one district is not enough, pointing out that overall, Alabama’s population is more than 25% Black.

A three-judge court, with two appointees of former President Donald Trump, had little trouble concluding that the plan likely violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the votes of Black Alabamians. That “likely” violation was the standard under which the preliminary injunction was issued by the three-judge panel, which ordered a new map drawn.

But the state quickly appealed to the Supreme Court, where five conservative justices prevented the lower-court ruling from going forward. At the same time, the court decided to hear the Alabama case.

Louisiana’s congressional map had separately been identified as probably discriminatory by a lower court. That map, too, remained in effect last year and now will have to be redrawn.

The National Redistricting Foundation said in a statement that its pending lawsuits over congressional districts in Georgia and Texas also could be affected."

-via AP, June 8, 2023