Alabama Supreme Court needed to watch 'Look Who's Talking Too' before IVF ruling
Why I agree with the couples suing the Alabama clinic but not the embryo debate
“If that’s your logic, every woman who has ever performed fellatio is a murderer.”
That was a comment I made in a Facebook debate back in 2009 when I was bickering with someone who self-identified as “pro-life.”
(Side note: AP Style changed this terminology to “anti-abortion,” which is more accurate. People like me who support the choice of getting an abortion still support the lives of women who are pregnant and/or other human beings who are strolling the streets every day. The ultimate irony is anti-abortion people who are pro-gun. Every day, 23 children and teens are shot in the United States. Are their lives not just as important?)
Initially, the guy I was talking to on Facebook didn’t get where I was coming from with the fellatio comment. As though Google is not free of charge, I ended up explaining the pregnancy process — sperm and egg slap high-fives in one fallopian tub, clicks up as a zygote, the zygote finds out “who all coming?” further in the fallopian tube, joins the morula gang-gang, etc.
I was pretty disappointed to be explaining (sarcastically) how babies are made to a man in his twenties when high school sex ed classes should’ve done this already. Then again, I’m also someone who spoke about safe sex, STDs and STIs on a college campus, only for a student to walk up to me after the speaking event and thank me profusely because his college health class only talked about diabetes.
In 2024, with the conservative party’s book-banning saga, they all must clutch their pearls if/when they see the opening of the 1990 film “Look Who’s Talking Too.”
And recent news regarding the Alabama Supreme Court 7-2 ruling about whether embryos are children is taking me right back to that Facebook debate (and this movie). According to their ruling, embryos are children whether they’re in or out of a uterus.
Every IVF treatment does not involve accidentally dropping embryos
I can’t defend the patient who wandered into the area and removed several embryos in 2020. Not only did the patient have no business going into this private area, but the patient dropped embryos on the floor. While I disagree with the term “killing them,” because those embryos could’ve been rejected in a woman’s body, in vitro fertilization (IVF) costs anywhere from $12K to $15K. Any embryo that is dropped on the ground is worth thousands and should not be handled casually. I can see being charged for property damage, but not murder.
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This case aside, I’m still blown away by grown men and women talking about embryos as though they’re not the equivalent of a brick. If someone drops a brick on the ground, I’m not calling the insurance company to say someone destroyed my whole house. It takes a helluva lot more bricks, lumber, concrete, steel, stone, drywall, etc. to get to the point of having an actual house.