“I don’t think that word means what you think it means.” Iñigo Montoya, The Princess Bride
Democrats must start carrying dictionaries to Congressional hearings so when Republicans insist that words mean things they don’t, they can correct them.
A rose by any other name
Let’s start with the basics.
An embryo is not a baby. An embryo is a fertilized egg that has not yet developed into a fetus. Likewise, a fetus is not a baby. A fetus is a fertilized egg that is more developed than an embryo but is still inside the mother’s uterus.
So, while both an embryo and a fetus are alive, they are entirely dependent on either a scientist in a lab (fertilized eggs awaiting implantation via IVF) or a mother’s body to keep them alive.
Human rights belong to people — not to embryos or fetuses
When we talk about human rights, we need to focus on babies, young children, and other distinct human beings. We cannot confer the same rights and privileges on an embryo or a fetus because they are not capable of exercising those rights.
An embryo can’t choose a religion, decide on a career, select a spouse, or even espouse an opinion. In every case, the opportunity for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as guaranteed by our Constitution, is unavailable to an embryo because it can’t hear, speak, or make choices while in a petri dish or a uterus.
Therefore, the fact that the Supreme Court in Alabama has decided that an embryo is, for all intents and purposes, a “baby” and has the same legal rights as a child, is moronic.
Abortion is healthcare and healthcare is a right
Anyone who is pregnant and doesn’t wish to be pregnant should have the option of an abortion. Nobody should be forced to have a child they do not want. Unwanted children do not fare well in this world — nor do parents who lack the resources to care for children they do not want, but are forced to have.
No one has the right to force someone to give birth. Your judgment isn’t valid here — nor is mine. The only one who should make this call is the one who is pregnant. The mother is the only one who will bear the physical and emotional trauma (even a safe pregnancy is traumatic) from carrying and birthing that child. The father may sympathize, but he will never experience the pregnancy in the inescapable first-hand way the mother will.
Would it be better if contraception made abortion unnecessary? Sure! But contraception isn’t 100% effective even when used as instructed. In a perfect world, every pregnancy would result in the birth of a healthy child and every healthy child would be born into a loving family that welcomes it with open arms.
But we do not live in a perfect world. We live in the real world. In the real world, sh#t happens.
Abortion bans make a tragic situation even more tragic
Sometimes a fetus develops problems before birth, and it cannot become a baby. When that happens, the pregnant mother and her family should be given the resources to handle that tragic situation in a way that mitigates the pain and suffering of all concerned. Yet, everything Republicans have done since reversing Roe v. Wade has made such situations more tragic and more painful.
Women who live in states where there is no abortion access are forced to travel out of state and leave their homes and loved ones for the medical care they need. At a critical time in their healthcare, they are abandoned by the medical profession and are left to navigate a difficult and expensive process replete with traps set by backward politicians who seem more interested in punishing women with health issues than supporting the right to life.
If an unborn child develops life-threatening conditions, what’s needed is a combination of medical expertise and consideration of the mental and physical health of the mother — which includes taking into consideration the mother’s family, the mother’s religion, and other personal factors such as the family’s financial resources and current living conditions.
Nobody is more acutely aware of and concerned for the life of an unborn child than the parents hoping to bring a child into this world. No one has the right to interfere with the medical choices parents and their doctors make when confronted with the news that the baby they hoped for will never be born.
It is an abomination that any politician has ever injected himself into this conversation, and it is a failing of our society that it’s been allowed.
IVF and why it’s in jeopardy now
We’ve seen countless Republicans jump at the chance to affirm their commitment to IVF since the absurd ruling in Alabama. However, none of the Republicans who’ve been so quick to speak up in support of IVF appear to understand how IVF works.
I’m not a scientist, but I do know this much: To get a single embryo to grow inside the womb of an infertile woman, you need a lot of fertilized eggs.
The idea is that the more eggs that are collected and fertilized, the greater chance you will have of finding a healthy egg that could go on to produce a baby. — FLO.com
This is why IVF clinics in Alabama have suddenly halted their IVF treatments. Every time they collect and fertilize eggs for IVF, knowing that most of them will not become babies, they are willfully destroying embryos. And if an embryo is a baby, that’s murder.
GOP Rep. Michelle Steel of California, who represents a Biden-won swing district, was one of the Republicans who came out quickly on social media to express support for IVF and share her own struggles with infertility. She also said she opposes any federal restrictions on the procedure.
But Steel is also a co-sponsor of the Life at Conception Act — which Democrats have been quick to point out. Steel’s office has not yet returned a request for comment on how she squares those two positions, nor have other House Republicans who expressed support for IVF while being co-sponsors of the House bill.-CNN
Republicans who pretend to support IVF while insisting that life begins at conception are confused. Either they don’t really support IVF or they don’t really believe life begins at conception. You can’t have it both ways because the two positions contradict each other.
The beginnings of the “pro-life” movement
You would be forgiven for thinking the “pro-life” movement was the result of religious leaders eager to push their convictions onto the rest of us, but you would be wrong.
When the Roe decision was handed down, W. A. Criswell, the Southern Baptist Convention’s former president and pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas — also one of the most famous fundamentalists of the 20th century — was pleased: “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person,” he said, “and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.” — Politico
Criswell’s view was common among religious leaders at the time. Here is another quote from the same Politico article:
Baptists, in particular, applauded the decision as an appropriate articulation of the division between church and state, between personal morality and state regulation of individual behavior. “Religious liberty, human equality and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision,” wrote W. Barry Garrett of Baptist Press.
Religious leaders were not the driving force behind the “pro-life” movement. The movement was created by politicians in the 70s and 80s who were looking to rile up conservatives. At the time, they didn’t care so much about abortion, but they were fuming over their inability to maintain segregated schools. Specifically, they were angry over their loss of tax deductions for schools that were white only. So, while much of America was supportive of civil rights, these backward few were doing everything possible to reverse the trend and maintain their racist agendas.
The cultural divide between so-called “pro-life” (more accurately termed “pro-birth”) and pro-choice movements was designed to create a political faction that would support other far-right policies once they bundled them all together into a so-called “pro-life” agenda. The real goal wasn’t to support life at all; rather, it was to return to the past, where men ruled over women and white people didn’t have to attend the same schools as Black people.
Pushing B.S. to the masses
President Reagan was a useful player in the conservative conspiracy to push the idea that life begins at conception.
(Before politicians got involved, the idea that life begins at conception was largely confined to Catholics — and they were generally not interested in forcing their view on the general public as long as they were free to practice their beliefs in private.)
Here is an excerpt from Reagan’s speech during the 1988 March for Life rally.
We’re told about a woman’s right to control her own body. But doesn’t the unborn child have a higher right? And that is to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. — Ronald Reagan, NPR
What about the woman’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Why is it acceptable to strip her of those rights to confer them on a fetus that is still inside its mother and can do absolutely nothing to pursue life, liberty, or happiness until it has been born? It is nonsensical.
Pro-birth is not pro-life
The so-called “pro-life” movement was never about life — it was always about ginning up political factions on the far right. After hi-jacking the evangelical movement, conservative politicians slapped the pro-life label on it and began a propaganda campaign designed to convince the public that abortion was rampant, babies were being murdered, and if they didn’t do something to stop it, they would be complicit in this heinous crime against God and humanity.
I remember this well. I lived near a Planned Parenthood clinic. I remember a constant stream of hysterical people holding posters with images of mutilated babies covered in blood. (I had seen an aborted fetus in a jar before. My stepdad went to medical school when I was in high school. It didn’t look anything like the posters — it was small and gray and had barely distinguishable features).
The protestors would stand outside the clinic for hours, day after day, holding up these horrific images while shouting at the women who were coming in and out of the clinic in an attempt to shame them for seeking reproductive healthcare. It was a level of harassment I had never witnessed before. I was surprised the police didn’t stop it — but I guess since the protestors confined themselves to public property there was nothing anybody could do about it.
The horrors of abortion bandied about by these misguided crusaders were fabricated, but effective. They were designed to fool the public into believing that unless they supported the “pro-life” movement, they would be complicit in murder. But it didn’t work. Decades later, between 60 and 80% of Americans still believe abortion should be legal in some, if not all, cases. And yet, with Trump’s three SCOTUS appointees, the court was able to upend the status quo and reverse a decision that held for over 50 years — with disastrous consequences.
The Dobbs decision
Practically, the Dobbs decision reversing Roe v. Wade has been a disaster. We now have conflicting laws that make it virtually impossible for doctors to know what they can do without risking imprisonment.
Morally, it’s been a disaster because in the name of life, we are watching women die and in some cases risk losing their ability to have a future child because they can’t access the medical care they need. Instead of working with doctors to promote life, politicians are dictating which life should be saved and which life should be sacrificed. Where is the morality in that?
Since Dobbs reversed Roe v Wade, Republican legislatures have rushed to codify abortion bans even as the people have rushed to codify abortion rights.
Every state now has to resolve this issue separately, and the failure of red states to bend to the will of the people has resulted in huge gaps between what is being enacted into law by Republican-controlled legislators and what the public wants.
You can’t legislate healthcare decisions
To be clear, it’s not pro-life to insist that a fetus that is no longer viable must remain in the body of its living mother until the mother dies of toxicity or the fetus finds its way out by some miracle. It’s stupidity.
You can’t legislate health — you must work with the situation as it unfolds — you can’t decide what to do before the fact, in a courtroom. These are moment-to-moment decisions that require expertise and empathy.
Does anybody believe a politician has more expertise or empathy than the doctor and his patient — the mother — the one who is experiencing the potential death of a life she desperately hoped would become her child?
The Republican approach to women’s health is barbaric and it violates the rights of every woman. We, too, have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Taking away a woman’s right to choose is taking away a woman’s life. It doesn’t matter how far along a pregnancy is or what state the mother lives in — any time a life is in jeopardy due to unforeseen disease, illness, or accident, it is a tragedy for everyone involved.
When such tragedy strikes, no one is more qualified to decide what’s needed than the patient, the patient’s family, and the patient’s doctor.
There is no place for politicians in this — none.