“The moment of fertilization”? How far is this, really, from: “Sex is only for making babies! Sex is not for having fun!”?Nancy Mace cosponsored the Life at Conception Act which would’ve put IVF and other fertility treatments at risk. #SC01 https://t.co/byM5Z9Pbsj
— CJ Warnke (@cjwarnke) February 23, 2024
“The moment of fertilization”? No small number of women “miscarry” without realizing they lost a fertilized egg because the zygote never implants in the uterine wall. How does the law ascertain “the moment of fertilization”? This is intrusion at a level beyond human capability.
And yet it’s the subject of IVF that arrests our attention.
I’ll retire to Bedlam.
“The moment of fertilization”? How far is this, really, from: “Sex is only for making babies! Sex is not for having fun!”?
ReplyDeleteThere is no distance at all. Alito's statement in Dobbs that abortion is different and nothing applies to contraception and sexual relations to patently false. They are all on an intermeshed continuum, with no bright lines, at least none that the reactionaries are willing to recognize. You can't "fix IVF" alone if you truly believe life begins at fertilization. The morning after pill is about preventing implantation, the IUD also interferes with implantation along with interfering with fertilization. The conservatives are aggressively targeting the morning after pill because it evades state bans on abortion, along with "encouraging recreational sex". The hard core anti-abortionists were never just about "saving babies", it was always going to end up with banning contraception and ultimately controlling sexual behavior. There is no bright line between abortion and contraception, and there is no bright line between contraception and sexual activity. (I am rankled by the pejorative term recreational sex. Sex is not bowling or watching a basketball game. It is a fundamental part of the human experience, an expression of each of our true selves, how we express and receive intimacy, and core to our physical, mental and even spiritual selves. It's sex, not "recreational sex". If we are going to ban all non-procreation sex, then everyone should be subject to a fertility test and anyone not fertile should be banned from any sexual activity at all.)
There was a reason Roe rested on Griswold and the complete line of privacy cases. You can't selectively starting overruling one without putting all at risk. The court can try and play cute with terms such as what constitutes abortion versus contraception, but the language immediately runs afoul of the realities of biology. Define abortion as anything that happens after implantation (which saves IVF, but allows the morning after pill, which I can't see the court conservatives abiding), and we are immediately faced with the reality of the ectopic pregnancy. The fertilized egg has implanted but it is impossible for a fetus to develop and the ectopic pregnancy will eventually kill the woman. The vast majority of the public is not willing to say that the random chance of an ectopic pregnancy, that will never produce a baby, is an automatic death sentence for the woman. Whatever complaint about the reasoning of Roe (what anyone thinks is actual better reasoning was never going to save Roe with the 6 supreme court reactionaries) there was a reason Roe needed to exist if we are to have privacy in our most intimate bodily needs.
The research shows that the majority of pregnancies end in miscarriage, not just the 20% or so they used to think did. That's a hell of a lot of women who they're going to want to investigate for some form of unlawful death.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.newscientist.com/article/2175534-women-have-more-miscarriages-than-live-births-over-their-lifetime/