Sarah Brown, from Birmingham, Ala., holds a sign in support of IVF treatments during a rally advocating for IVF rights outside the Alabama State House on Feb. 28, in Montgomery.Stew Milne/The Associated Press
If anyone was going to out-Atwood Margaret Atwood herself, the Supreme Court of Alabama – led by a Bible-quoting chief justice in a state where abortion is banned, even for pregnancies resulting from rape and incest – seemed like a feasible candidate. As if scripted by Aunt Lydia herself, the court recently ruled that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law.
“Unborn children are ‘children’ … without exception based on developmental stage, physical location, or any other ancillary characteristics,” the majority decision said, overturning two lower court rulings.
It’s the latest blow to women’s rights in a continuing season of setbacks. And it sets yet another dangerous precedent.
The embryos in question belonged to three couples who had undergone in vitro fertilization treatments, which had led to some healthy births. They had paid to keep other embryos frozen in a storage facility. In 2020, a patient entered the area and dropped them on the floor – “killing them,” the court ruling said. The plaintiffs were fighting for compensation, which, yes, they deserve. But they have opened a whole test tube of worms.
The frozen embryos had previously been considered property. The elected judges, all Republican, ruled that the couples could pursue wrongful death claims for what they called “extrauterine children.”
The shocking ruling has spawned some dark humour – can pregnant women now drive alone in carpool lanes? But of course, this is not funny. The implications are cruel and terrifying. And they were immediate.
At least three major IVF providers in Alabama halted their work, leaving couples desperate to have children in the lurch, including people days away from their scheduled procedures. Frozen embryos are being frantically shipped to other states. Would-be parents are facing indefinite bills for embryo storage. People who work in reproductive care are terrified about being held liable for accidents.
The ruling, ironically, is anti-family. In its wake, Alabama (which does allow abortion to prevent “a serious health risk” to a pregnant woman) scrambled to introduce a law that would protect IVF.
All of this chaos, heartbreak, panic and uncertainty is the direct result of the theocracy creep brought about by the far-right campaign to enshrine religion further into American life.
Alabama’s chief justice is Tom Parker, a Christian, the founding executive director of the conservative think tank Alabama Family Alliance (now the Alabama Policy Institute), and a darling of the anti-abortion movement. He wrote in his opinion: “Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God.”
In a statement, the anti-abortion group Live Action applauded the court’s decision: “Each person, from the tiniest embryo to an elder nearing the end of his life, has incalculable value that deserves and is guaranteed legal protection.”
Tell that to the Alabama man who in January became the first person to be executed by nitrogen gas in the U.S., in what was essentially an experiment after a previous attempt to kill him by lethal injection didn’t work. Such innovators they are, in Alabama.
This mess, U.S. President Joe Biden says, is a direct result of the overturning of Roe v. Wade: “The disregard for women’s ability to make these decisions for themselves and their families is outrageous and unacceptable.”
And so we roll into a weekend of marches ahead of International Women’s Day. Women’s rights – including agency over their own bodies – are especially on the decline in the U.S., where lawmakers are grabbing more and more women by the reproductive zone. All this as Donald Trump could make a return to the White House.
Who would have thought it possible to have a more depressing and urgent Women’s March than the one held the day after Mr. Trump’s (first?) inauguration in 2017? Then came the overturning of Roe, which had guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion. And now we are slipping back even further. All the pink hats in North America are not going to save women from this.
But they do send a message. And in some countries, politicians are listening. In France, the senate voted this week to enshrine abortion rights into the constitution. “When women’s rights are attacked in the world, France stands up,” Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said.
In Ms. Atwood’s dystopian blockbuster The Handmaid’s Tale, biblical literalism is used to control women for political reasons and support a powerful elite. “The Handmaid’s Tale seemed rather far-fetched in 1985, even to me,” Ms. Atwood stated in 2020, following the publication of its sequel, The Testaments. “But never say never.”
She continued: “I only hope that the wave of authoritarian political behaviour we have been witnessing will retreat, and that our collective circumstances will not get worse.”
Four years later, this is where we are. There is still a lot to march about.