It would have been easy enough to add the unborn (of whatever cell count) to that specific law without defining the unborn (of any cell count) as children or persons. That they chose to make the definition change is, itself, telling. If nothing else, it puts IVF related businesses on notice that changes will be coming whenever they can squeeze them through.
Sounds like some “quiverfull” stuff, or whatever they’re calling themselves these days. You can never have too many kids, as long as they’re Christians! But yeah, it sounded like he was just spewing talking points.
I’m struggling with this but still see distinctions. First, if a guy beats up a pregnant lady (causing the death of her fetus) then I’d argue she has a real expectation as to that child.
Frozen embryos? Seems like there’s a lot of distance between the expectation of a child (in the above example) and in the case of the frozen embryo.
Wouldn’t they actually go to Limbo or possibly Hell? Since they are un baptized and therefore still blotted by original sin?
They would be before the age of accountability.).
Maybe, maybe not, according to the Catechism of the Church… it’s up to God’s mercy and we hope that He would grant the fetus/ un baptized infants His grace and mercy. But ?
CCCC 1257 The Lord himself affirms that Baptism is necessary for salvation. He also commands his disciples to proclaim the Gospel to all nations and to baptize them. Baptism is necessary for salvation for those to whom the Gospel has been proclaimed and who have had the possibility of asking for this sacrament. The Church does not know of any means other than Baptism that assures entry into eternal beatitude; this is why she takes care not to neglect the mission she has received from the Lord to see that all who can be baptized are “reborn of water and the Spirit.” God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but he himself is not bound by his sacraments.
CCCC 1261 As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them. Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus’ tenderness toward children which caused him to say: “Let the children come to me, do not hinder them,” allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism. All the more urgent is the Church’s call not to prevent little children coming to Christ through the gift of holy Baptism.
“So you want to transport children across state lines to do what now? Insert them without consent into the vaginas of women??”
Sooooooo many negligent parents leaving their tykes in cryo. I mean, I assume there isn’t one GOP official with some babies on ice.
The IVF facilities should send notices to the owners of those eggs that they must come pick them up. Same as they would be required to pickup their kids from daycare. If they do not they are guilty of neglect at the least. Bring an ice box. Once they have the eggs, it is up to them to keep their kid alive or face charges.
The best take on this that I’ve seen is from Bill Maher. He showed a wastebasket full of Kleenex from jerking off and opined that in Alabama, that would be considered “an unlicensed daycare center”. 
I don’t think that’s a fair summary of what puzzlegal said.
In the part of her post that you quoted, @puzzlegal simply points out that, while a narrow interpretation is great and all, anyone actually involved with IVF in Alabama has to assume the broader reading until and unless the law is changed. I’m pretty sure you made the same point yourself earlier.
The rest of her post that you didn’t quote simply explains a lack of trust in the intent of the law in question. The analysis here has nothing to do with them being “the enemy.” It is just analysis based on the actual results of a law.
That’s a standard form of analysis. In order to determining the intent of a policy, you first look at the results. Then you look for any attempt to mitigate any results. Any results that are not mitigated are the intended results.
At no point does she argue that this means you were wrong. Just that your narrow reading does not alone fix the issue.
There’s a reason why Legal Eagle talks about both the broad and narrow readings. You cannot assume one is the only one that is relevant.
I am curious…LegalEagle noted that the Alabama court made IVF de facto impossible but NOT de jure impossible. In other words (as I understand it) they did NOT say IVF is illegal but there is no way to do IVF that is not illegal.
Sometimes (ok, often) the courts mystify me. Is this some sneaky court dodge to say, “Hey! We didn’t make IVF illegal…totally did not do that! But, it is impossible to do IVF legally. Neat, right!?”
I took it to mean that you’re free to employ IVF, so long as every embryo ends up a viable pregnancy (or at least that’s tried). And, of course, that’s not how IVF works.
Or you have to do one egg at a time, which would be insanely expensive and invasive.
Your argument would lead me to the opposite conclusion. A woman carrying a 10 day old embryo may not even know she is pregnant, and if she is, it might have been an accident. But it takes enormous amounts of intent (and time and money and unpleasant and probably unsafe intentional medical intervention) to create a frozen embryo.
But anyway, the court ruling wasn’t about the wishes or hopes or dreams (or property rights) of the mother. It could have been, but that would have been a very different ruling. Instead, it was based on the status of the embryo as a “child”.
I suspect that most of the people involved had very little understanding of how IVF works, and/or hadn’t paid much of any attention to IVF’s existence or its degree of importance for many people; and that they didn’t realize they were defacto making it illegal.
Some of them may also be in favor of making IVF illegal; but I think most of it was just ignorance. Which is, unfortunately, in considerable supply when the subject has anything to do with human reproduction.
The Chief Justice who wrote the concurring opinion clearly would rather have it be illegal.
True. But if the others had fully agreed with him, wouldn’t that have been the main opinion, instead of a concurring one?
Or were the others just more worried of being knocked down if they decided on specifically religious grounds?
Maybe, or they just didn’t want to go that far, or understood the broader implications (important stuff like being able to use the HOV lane if you’re pregnant or had some embryos with you), or didn’t agree with his face of God or whatever ridiculousness.
Or how anything in the female reproductive system works.
Like Todd Akin who believed a woman can’t get pregnant from rape* because her body has ways of “shutting that thing down.”
* That would be “legitimate” rape, whatever the F that is.