Couples race to move frozen embryos out of Alabama after court defines them as children
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2024/02/21/alabama-court-ruling-frozen-embryos-are-children/Open linkView original on lemmy.nz768
Comments195https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2024/02/21/alabama-court-ruling-frozen-embryos-are-children/Open linkView original on lemmy.nz
I guess soon, when you break-up with someone, the state might charge you with killing the idea of the children you might have had.
10 more years and we are at "contraception is murder"
10? Try 1 if Trump gets in.
🎶 every sperm is sacred, every sperm is good 🎶
Can't wait to tell Republicans how many millions of babies I've eaten
You know how I can confidently say that anyone who is against the right to choose hates women?
Because doesn't matter how much they claim to love children, and how many shenanigans they pull like this one, I know for a fact that not a single one of them would ever in their whole life even entertain the idea of charging a man who masturbated with mass murder.
Yeah but that man only releases HALF-babies by the millions. So that’s the loophole, right?
I hate to break this to you but for some men in these states those sperms will only count as 3/10ths of a baby.
For those that can't do fractions: That's 1/2 of 3/5ths.
So if I jerk off on the firehouse steps can I claim I'm just using the Safe Harbor law?
No, it's probably sooner then you think.
https://www.npr.org/2014/03/25/293956170/hobby-lobby-contraceptive-case-goes-before-supreme-court#:~:text=The%20owners%20are%20conservative%20Christians%20who%20object,what%20we%20should%20operate%20our%20lives%20by
Or paying child support on every single embryo.
Alabama top selling item on Amazon right now:
Nobody cares. Nice hat.
Newman!
Nuh uh uh you didn’t day the magic word!
Dennis Nedry!
Thanks for a good laugh in these dark times.
Isn't it illegal to transport a child to commit a crime? Human trafficking? Kidnapping? What a can of worms. I feel like there's too much money in fertility treatments for SCOTUS to let this stand.
Well since they don't have birth certificates I guess they're undocumented people and that would be bad mmkay.
Embryo camps. Spotlights, very small dogs. We'll get every last one.
Just send them on a bus to sanctuary cities! Checkmate... Oh, wait, that gives them what they want. We've been Uno reverse carded!
They're my kids so they can live in my freezer
Freezer full of tax deductions
All fun and games until hungover you makes 1 smoothie too many...
Joke's on you, I'm a recovering alcoholic
Recovering from injury after falling down stairs on your last bemder?
Actively working to take back control of my own life, and developing the tools I need to stay sober.
If you've been hurt in a bemder accident you deserve compensation. Contact James Jameson and Co. We will stand up -for you- when you fall down. Call 1800thisisamemefuxyou
This is a travesty. These people are engaging in blatant and obvious child trafficking
I see what you did there
He did the Republican thing that they always do.
You know. Be bad people.
Look here, pal!
I spent the first ten years of my childhood in Alabama living in a freezer! Do you have any idea what that’s like?
No hugs, no toys. A fucking freezer!
For ten years of my childhood!
You think that's bad? I literally stayed in my dad's balls for a while.
Swimming in his pee as well‽
Won't be long until Alabama considers miscarriage to be murder. Wait...that actually is already a thing:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59214544
I'm surprised the Alabama legal system isn't more comfortable with miscarriages. They seem to have had a lot recently
So the 'crime' is of causing the death of the foetus through illegal drug use.
It's not conclusive that the cause was drug use. And that really should not matter anyway. It was a miscarriage.
But wait... that means they can claim them as dependents right?
One would think.
"Yes, I see on your tax forms that you have claimed 1034 dependents, which means that the state actually owes YOU. Here is your big bag of money sir."
Well considering most people who have them are wealthy, it would fit right in with Republicans wanting to give tax breaks to the rich.
The real question is child support.
Oh man, get the state to pay for the storage costs for your embryos. That'll put and end to this silly shit STAT.
Tinder in certain states will put up an alert, warning you that if female, by proceeding with the date, you may be liable to carry a child to term, and if male, will need to pre-deposit child support in an escrow account.
That's why you don't have sex until you can get a vasectomy
Ooh I like the child support pre-deposit idea. Sounds ominously like taking responsibility for the child you might conceive from your pleasure.
The onion almost got me again.
Wait..
COUPLE ATTEMPTS TO SMUGGLE CHILDREN ACROSS STATE LINES
More at ten
Massive child trafficking ring brought down in Alabama. Governor to receive medal for outstanding achievement in law enforcement as 700 arrests are performed statewide.
I'm not messing with that soft paywall. Are they saying that parents who let their frozen embryos go bad in the freezer are guilty of murder or manslaughter?
That's one interpretation. The judge used religious logic in his ruling.
Fucking Christian whackos
we need to get religion out of our society, it causes nothing but problems.
You don't understand. This old book told me all the answers to life's mysteries. WoOoOooo it's infallible.
God it would be funny/sad if someone found a copy of Mike Pences auto biography 10,000 years after some cataclysm destroyed society. Than they started worshiping it.
You said it wrong. You failed your attempt at conversion.
Wololo. Wololo. Wololo.
Welcome to the Huns.
Why are my clothes red?
My dad was one of those jerks that would build 30-40 priests on an Econ build and then push with them when you decided to try and crack that nut,
Poof there goes your army.
Not that he really knew what an Econ build was, or any of the other things. But he’d play this “I don’t know what I’m doing” act and get away with it, (and he wasn’t good enough to deserve a feudal rush. Just… annoying.)
These kind of "Christians" are about as christian as the people from Sodom.
That doesn't make it right to fuck things up for everyone else.
Sorry, that's a no true Scotsman fallacy.
It doesn't matter if they aren't Christ-like. Many, many Christians, including clergy and even pontiffs have committed atrocities. They still worshiped Christ, making them Christians.
If we were to play it your way, the Crusaders weren't Christians, the Spanish Inquisition weren't Christians, the Conquistadors weren't Christians, etc. I don't think that's what you intend, but that is the problem with suggesting people who are not Christlike are not Christians.
Otherwise, we need to invent a new religion and put a huge percentage of people from the last 2000 years who thought they were called Christians into it.
They are fascists. Fascist christians vs christians.
If you read the fallacy you'd realize that you fell into the false fallacy fallacy.
To quote your linked article:
There is plenty of countries with a christian background and still majority christian population, that wouldn't even think to discuss such absurd policies. American nutjobs cannot be considered to be representative of christianity as a whole. Much of their nutjobbery is specific to them.
No one said they were. They aren't. But they are Christians. That is their religion even if you don't like that it is the same as yours.
All of the above are Catholic, and the vast majority of Christians I know would agree that they aren't Christian.
Catholics are the OG Christians, despite what all the seething Protestants might tell you.
That is not only another No True Scotsman fallacy, it's also anecdotal.
Catholics are undeniably Christians no matter what other Christians may think. Catholicism likely came before their sect anyway.
I've been thinking of them as antichristian. Not as in against Christianity, but as in antichrist ...ian. From what I've heard the whole idea of the antichrist is supposed to be that Christians love the guy even though the guy goes against all of the lessons of Jesus, but he does the performative stuff. That sounds like what I see there.
Christianity is an evil ideology, and they are acting as christians.
It is absolutely an evil ideology and shut be utterly abolished along with all Abrahamic religions. Fuck the Constitution; they got this one dead wrong
*theistic religions
Believing that the flying spaghetti monster will solve all the worlds issues means you don't function in society
Sad that you have not been touched by His noodly appendage. Perhaps one day, Ramen
Ain't no logic to be found there.
Well it says here you are bread, and as such are guilty of cannibalism.
to be fair, the (wrongful death*) lawsuit was because the hospital or wherever they were being stored at let the frozen embryos die off. It's entirely reasonable to expect some kind of... protection... considering the reason for those to have been stored was so they might be able to have kids, etc.
*wrongful death is a bit much, mind you. But how far do you want to take the "guy beats a pregnant woman to kill the baby" types of charges? ultimately, I suspect, the issue here is that the religious nutjobs lack nuance. they see the world as black-and-white and can't fathom a possibility where there were damages in this matter, but it wasn't a "wrongful death" scenario.
From what I've previously read the agency that had the frozen embryos did not let them die off, they stored them properly in an industrial freezer kept at far below 0 temps. The issue was a person who didn't work at the clinic snuck into the room with the fridge, opened it and then dropped the embryos and ran away (the article said the assumption was because the containers were so cold he got freeze-burned). There might be a case here that they didn't do enough to stop the individual, or check on them often enough, I don't know enough details to know, but it doesn't sound like they just simply didn't care or didn't store them properly.
States have long had laws against forcibly ending someone else's pregnancy and those have stood up even before Roe died. It's not usually on the level of murder/manslaughter, but at a minimum it's been treated as a destruction of property. You don't have to treat the embryo as a person to charge someone with aggravated battery or something similar.
The main issue here is the broadness of this ruling (besides the whole quoting the Bible thing) which equates embryos with full-human life. It won't change a whole lot in this case, the families could have still sued for negligence or destruction of property, or any number of other civil remedies of this was denied, but now it's laid the ground work to do much worse things in the future.
Looking close, you’re right. Vandals got in.
I would suggest the facility was negligent in their security arrangements, as far as wrongful death (again, it’s a pretty dubious “if”, that it goes that far), it would be like somebody dying because the building wasn’t up to code when an arson came by.
My assumption is, though, that there’s a budget-rate
warm bodysecurity guard; and between shit pay, shit training, shittier oversight… the guard couldn’t be arsed to care. (Alternatively, the guard was going to sell them for drug money.)The good news for the facility… if their lawyers were any good in that contract they’d have gotten an indemnity clause and can pass that buck. (Liability is a bitch; and she hits hard. The security company will probably go poof unless they’re the size of G4S or Securitas)
In any case… personally, it doesn’t rise to wrongful death, but I can see a need for nuance. I would, personally, suggested the couple treat it as property, similar to a safety deposit box.
How could it be battery if the embryos aren't treated as people? Nobody was battered. No victim was even present.
For the record, if we treat this more like a safety deposit box; the couple are the victims here.
It should probably be treated that way.
Their argument is because those embryos had potential to be human… they should be treated as human.
I don’t buy it, and it’s certainly not something that should establish the precedent that embryos=babies.
So sue for property damage. Harvesting embryos is an expensive and painful process. Hell you could even sue for pain and suffering.
But wrongful death is just ridiculous.
Gee, that’s…. More or less what I’m saying?
Sorry for the confusion, the battery part of my reply was related to forcibly ending someone else's pregnancy, which would have to involve some kind of battery unless it's like poison or something, not related to the embryos in the freezer. There is no battery to those since they are not people.
I don’t see how this isn’t prima facie evidence of a first amendment violation (presuming that the courts or state legislatures are bound by “Congress” being synonymous with “Government” as I believe it’s been interpreted)
Pretty sure personal beliefs which haven't been proven should make the ruling invalid. He's judge, not king.
If I were in Alabama I'd race to move out of Alabama
I don't live in Alabama and I am moving out of Alabama just in case
If those embryos count as children, wouldn't it be OK to ask for all kinds of legal benefits for them?
It’s the most effective way to challenge the law. Just carry it through to its natural conclusion.
"Wow I suddenly have 11 kids to care for. I can't afford to live. Better apply for snap and tanf."
Lol, you think there are any social programs left after these chucklefucks are through.
Tax write offs for storage!
Using transit lanes!
Family tax benefits!
Ooh! Divorce and file for child support for dozens of kids!
Adopt thousands of them and then every few days remove one from the freezer or fridge or whatnot and then demand bereavement leave.
Carpool lane with 2 vials in the passenger seat?
Sounds like transporting a minor across state lines
It turns out parents are allowed to take their children over state lines.
Yeah but frozen?
Let it go. Let it go!
I mean, if you thaw them without being ready for them, they die - so yeah, frozen.
Well that’s a potential future news headline that I hadn’t imagined until just now. I can hardly wait to be horrified!
if a woman has a period and has had sex, there is a good chance a fertilized egg was probably somewhere around the blood, making every woman in Alabama who has had sex a possible serial killer
I think you're a little confused about the normal reproductive cycle.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implantation_(embryology)#Implantation_failure
Seems like it's extremely normal for a fertilized egg to fail to implant and be flushed out during your next period.
what do i have wrong
You have referenced forbidden knowledge. You are not supposed to talk about god doing abortions.
I think you just didn't word it clearly enough. Someone might read it as a woman getting pregnant from sex during period, which is not what you meant.
Periods are shedding the lining of the uterus and the unfertilised egg.
it is impossible that a fertilized egg can shed? i was under the impression that it may sometimes happen
(It happens frequently. Like more often then it doesn't huehuehue)
What the fuck is going on with the down votes? Did you kids go to school???
Yes we know what a period is, and it's common for eggs to be flushed out after falling to implant.
Fun fact, there is quite more to learn about everything after school. School will provide you with rather abbreviated and often simplified version of scientific conses from around 50 years ago.
Fuck
Mate, are you just so confused with what is happening with the responses here? I've literally had an abortion; I'm pro choice. But there's this random pile on of I'm assuming men, telling us what idiots we are.
What kind of monster submerges their child in liquid nitrogen?
Mine was just delivering pizza to… I. C. Weiner? Aw man…
Welcome, to the world of tomorrow!
Shut up, Terry
Haven't you heard of a little thing called showmanship?
But you should see their cute little frozen faces!
They don't all come back out alive either!
Think of the potential tax wind fall these people could have! I'd knuckle shuffle up some "kids" and rake in the tax money.
Unfortunately they made embryos children for the purposes of punishments, but let the bill die that would have made them dependents on taxes.
What if we treat that bill as a person, too?
Take it to court! They either have to decide this law is shit, or it forces the state to pay for them.
Well they cant be half children. Theyre either kids or not, Id claim them all and if they audit it, then it FORCES the government to involve themselves and set a precedent. If it's a life, its certainly dependent on the clinic, claim them. Also if they're truly considered lives, they are inherently entitled to all the rights the US offers living humans. A state tax bill can't negate that, only dropping the clasification of being a living being can.
The history of this country proves that we have no issues with the blatant cognitive dissonance of declaring someone to only be a portion of a person.
And now there's precedent on how that's not legal. I still think its a worthwile challenge.
Sounds like human trafficking to me!
If a couple who has a frozen embryo divorces, who pays child support and for how long?
What about visitation rights? Alabama has a lot of explaining to do. 🤗🤡
By that logic, women are committing murder every time they menstruate.
Maybe I missed something because the article is behind a paywall.
Edit: ok, as pointed out, I don’t know how these things work. I apologize, and accept all the downvotes and jabs you can give.
An unfertilized egg is not the same thing as an embryo.
Well… their religion has a virgin birth so maybe that’s where their confusion comes from.
Don't give them ideas.
Fertilized eggs get flushed all the time when they fail to implant. One step closer to making sex illegal. Fucking idiots....
Not sure you understand what an embryo is or how menstruation works.
Shit. Ok. I’m stupid. I’ll see myself out.
At least you owned up to it.
No worries, now you know stuff you didn't before
Plenty of times a fertilized egg is expelled during menstruation for one reason or another though.
They'd be happy to lock up all women in camps.
Don’t forget about semen. Billions of babies… on the carpet.
Remind me never to visit your home.
I hate to tell you, but semen is on everything. Men jerk off literally everywhere.
You ain't wrong buddy. Your comment asked for it though with the way it was dressed ,in my defense.
My birthday suit is very professional!!
I don't.
Take care not to trip in the cum keepers crypt
Surely you can think of a better place to blow your load onto than on the carpet
He speaks on behalf of the whole Internet
Oh, my bad.
Isn't classifying a gamete, but only the female gamete (egg/ovum), and not the male gamete (sperm), of being "children" and has personhood rights, a form of sexist law. I know the Land of freedom is no rookie in taking away freedoms of the marginalized, almost the norm, but now they are taking away male gametes from being recognised as persons. Imagine in one ejaculation in Alabama and having a murder count similar to Stalin or Hitler. The court will show it was premeditated because the person bypassed state restrictions pulling out during copulation, the accused thus commited mass murder. This goes against Genesis 38 and it's Devine condemnation of coitus interruptus. Even the egg was unfertilized thus another death of a person was committed by the accused pullout game
Not trying to defend the ruling, but it's not eggs, it's embryos
I'll need to do proper research, but to my understanding the embryo is an egg(ovum). I'm not sure at what point an ovum becomes an embryo, but I'm fairly certain it's shortly after a sperm cell penetrates the outer layer and begins the mitosis.
An embryo results from the fusion of an egg and a sperm (both are called 'gametes'), and although the embryo is initially more reminiscent of an egg than a sperm, it is not itself an egg (or a sperm). The person I replied to is conflating eggs and embryos.
So two gametes, male sperm and famale ovum, fuse to become a zygote or embryo. I just assumed their ruling meant the gametes because that is an ovum, and an embryo is a zygote
Your argument holds no weight against a group of people (the current republican supporters) who have repeatedly proven to be misogynistic assholes who gladly vote for a rapist.
Cruelty is the point of their actions, not the side-effect - pointing out to them that their actions are unjust has no effect when that was their goal from the start.
My argument was not meant to hold weight, it was absurdist in its meaning by taking their arguments to the extreme and show its shortcomings. Trying to convince religious zealots that their religious reasonings is wrong is just going to make them double down and commit even more. That is why I make fun of their logic through comedy and hope even though I might not reach them I might put a smile on other open minded people.
Every sperm is sacred, every sperm is great!
If a sperm gets wasted, god get quite irate
Although- does that mean that ovulation is murder? Or, at the very least, manslaughter?
Lol nice
Shouldn't they do that with actual children as well? Just to be safe?
Children are only important until they are born. After that's happened they can work down the mines for all they care.
I figured that their parents might care a wee bit.
I’d be taking my fetusicles and getting the hell out of dodge too, if I were in their shoes.
Cue the Duke boys flying thru the air
Crygotes don't wear shoes
Hooray! You can't win! The Republicans' favorite kind of game!
I haven't read Alabama's ruling, but if those embryos are legally children, then yes. Fortunately the destination state and the federal government do not agree, so you won't have to worry about it unless you live in Alabama.
Dafuq going on ova der?
Probably time to remind everybody the Judiciary branch can't actually enforce its rulings. If they're going to go full on religious crazy we can just start ignoring them.
Sure you can. It's not like the DA's office and police are in lock-step with them or anything right?
Law gets enforced if power finds it useful to enforce. Ignoring it is not an option, for people actually in danger of having the law enforced against them.
And that, kids, is why Andrew Jackson is on the 20 dollar bill.
Yeah, but you go ahead and ignore first. I'll see what happens
I was confused for a moment because the thumbnail looked like a Wendy's burger patty on a grill.
But Wendy's is always fresh, never frozen
Where’s the beef?
Anyone that's taken by surprise by this never lived in Alabama anyway.
Anybody else clicked on this because the thumbnail looked like a picture of a cheez-it and you were curious what cheez-its have to do with alabama & embryos?
Triscuit to me.
Looked like raw hamburger meat to me.
im going to eat one
Isn't the fact that the parents are in Alabama the more relevant than where the egg is. If there is a record of who owns the egg on the premises of an Alabama provider wherein it may be seized by the Alabama authorities it may be used to demand of the provider or parents an accounting of the disposition of the egg. If it has been destroyed and the information regarding its destruction is available to the provider in state (which would be normal) they can still be charged. Inability to account for it is suspicious in itself and parents could be held in contempt and forced to disclose.
soft pay walled
This is an absolute tragedy but is also very much a leopards ate my face moment.
Do not feel sorry for these people, though. People who can afford these treatments are wealthy and they certainly voted for the sort of politicians that would create this state supreme court.
Currently holding my newborn as I type this. Up until a few months ago, this little human being was a frozen embryo.
Both of my children were IVF babies, and I'm about as left leaning as they come.
Also, we're not wealthy by any stretch. We ended up participating in a clinical trial that provided free IVF therapy (minus some misc costs).
I absolutely feel sorry for our fellow American citizens who are going through this horror, regardless of their political affiliation. Politicians are dealing in lives and livelihoods as if we average citizens mean nothing to them (spoiler alert, we don't).
You should look into expanding your worldview.
I should? I'm complaining about how people in a state voted in people who would do something as horrid and cruel as this is and I should expand my worldview? Maybe, just maybe, it is possible to look at the accomplishments of a group and judge them based on that. All of this "you should feel sorry for people in Texas" nonsense falls into this same category. Yes, I can feel sorry for individuals who are victim of these sorts of atrocities while still believing that Texas is a shithole state that shouldn't exist. Alabama is no different.
Further, you take exception with my comment on wealth while admitting that you didn't pay for it yourself. Seems pretty disingenuous.
You should also probably seek help from a licensed clinical professional counselor
That's quite the stretch to assume all of these people are conservatives.
Of course not all are but it's fucking Alabama, the right armpit of the gulf coast.
Yeah IVF isn't cheap and it isn't covered buy regular health insurance so its all out of pocket.
My insurance covers it