No exception for “extrauterine children”
Frozen objects in test tubes are children, according to the Alabama Supreme Court. Not potential children, future children, the makings of children, but children.
Referencing antiabortion language in the state constitution, the judges’ majority opinion said that an 1872 statute allowing parents to sue over the wrongful death of a minor child applies to “unborn children,” with no exception for “extrauterine children.”
“Even before birth, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory,” Chief Justice Tom Parker wrote in a concurring opinion.
But. But. But “God” isn’t real, “God” is an idea invented by humans. We don’t even know what “the image of God” would look like, because there are no photos. You might as well say embryos in test tubes have the image of Jane Eyre or Bugs Bunny or Yosemite Sam. “God” is just a name, with nothing to stick it to. And what does it mean to “efface” someone’s “glory”?
If only we could lock the god-botherers and the gender-botherers in a room and let them argue with each other from here to eternity. So many problems solved.
Except we do know what Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam look like; they are as fictional as god, but no one pretends they are real. But the point is taken…god is as fictional as characters we admit are fictional.
Since judges are supposed to be bound by the constitution, it seems a bit out of bounds to talk about “God’s glory” in a court judgement. I know judges do such things all the time, but they shouldn’t.
Would it be different for an atheist’s child? Or do we have to be images of god even if we don’t want to be and don’t believe he is real? And which god are we images of? Not Ganesha, I guess, or Hanuman, but there are other gods than Yahweh. If I could be the image of Quetzalcoatl, that might be all right.
Don’t be so hasty! One clump of cells looks pretty much like the next, and mammalian embryonic develeopment can go a fair distance before you can ID exactly which clade it might belong to. It would seem that, if nothing else, the “image of God” changes from resembling a blastocyst, through a lot of other stages, before it settles onto a good-old-fashioned male, anthropomorphic form that can be the starting point of the traditional long, white beard, bearing a strong resemblance to Gandalf. Or Santa.
So if a lab worker drops a tray, they’re a serial murderer?
Power outage makes the energy company worse than Ted Bundy?
Right-wingers (of a certain stripe) hate surrogacy; IVF is the main reason why…
I was listening to The Bulwark (now with Tim Miller as Charlie Sykes has retired) yesterday or the day before. He and his guest were discussing how there has always been a core of conservative ‘pro-lifers’ that hated IVF and want to ultimately ban it because it in their eyes results in multiple abortions. Another strategy is to allow (essentially require) any left over embryos to be given up for ‘adoption’.
On what basis can anyone say that “Even before birth, all human beings have the image of God.” Of course, we should simply dismiss the idea since there is no God. But if we take it in terms of the beliefs expressed in Genesis, we have to ask what does speaking about the image of God even mean? We have no idea. But it is implausible to think that reference is being made to fertilised eggs, since no one knew of them at the time, so it couldn’t have been part of the meaning of ‘image of God’. The implication is that it refers either to physiognomy or mental characteristics. We are in the image of God in respect of our ability to know good and evil, for example, for it is in that section of the story that the idea of the image of God arises. Or we are in the image of God in that we have a physical structure that may have been thought to reproduce God’s image.
What is more striking is an American state making laws grounded on religious beliefs. This simply determines what people must believe, since religious interpretations bind people to the beliefs of those defining them. Yet I thought that no religious test was required for citizenship in the US.
Besides, religious beliefs are open to hermeneutical variety and resulting confusion. There is no way we can pin down definitive religious beliefs, unless we have an ecclesial structure that provides the means for defining dogma. Is the Alabama Supreme Court going to start defining Christian (or any other) religious dogma which will be binding on Alabamans?
What a peculiar country the US is. It began with 13 colonies that were seeking religious freedom, and yet the country itself is overburdened with fundamentalists of various stripes who want to define what everyone must believe. I’m glad I live in Canada!
If I can add an extra ‘but’ in there; God is real, on the basis of Rev. 1-7 KJV: “Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him.” The clouds there are obviously the steam condensed on the bathroom mirror. God is there in every mirror image of whoever. (I speak/blog here in my capacity as a polytheist.)
I was once involved in a fascinating theological discussion with a little old lady who happened to be sitting next to me in a bus station. She maintained on the basis of that biblical passage that the long-awaited return of Christ to Earth was nigh, thanks to the invention of TV. God would have no trouble simultaneously interrupting every TV program on Earth in order to make his announcement, and in all languages.
I found that to be a revelation as good as coming from St. John the Divine. Himself.
But of course, I’m still waiting. Hope once sprang eternal. But then, it dawned on me that spending the rest of Eternity singing the praises of the manifestly greatest narcissist in the whole Universe might get a tad boring, say after the first million years or so.
Sort of. But they were seeking religious freedom for themselves, not for everyone. The Puritans wanted the freedom to make their religion dominant. It took a couple of hundred years before the idea of true religious freedom took root, and even then only imperfectly.
The Court’s opinion is infused with religious doctrine. That should have no place in a court ruling on a secular law. Government in the United States is duty bound to stand aside from religions and religious dogmas in making decisions for all the people, based on material fact and secular laws of general application.
Yes it’s funny how ambiguous that “colonies that were seeking religious freedom” is, isn’t it. It could mean in the abstract, but it doesn’t. Now if it were land or gold, we would know it meant for themselves, but with good old “religious freedom” we’re bamboozled into thinking they meant generalized RF. Excellent point
Yes, that’s true, they were seeking religious freedom for themselves, but when the thirteen colonies joined together, that freedom had to transform itself into general religious freedom, which is the way it got spelled out in the constitution. I don’t know the American constitution well enough to say, but this should mean that the Alabama law is contrary to it. As Joyce Vance points out over at Civil Discourse, no national religion of the constitution applies also to the states through the 14th Amendment. Besides, democracy is threatened wherever religion is permitted spell out what people may do or believe. This is what is so dangerous about the present composition of the Supreme Court, where all but one (?) Supreme Court Justice is a Roman Catholic. This should not be possible, and it surprises me that no one seems to be more concerned about it than they are. It may need an amendment to the constitution, but it should be done.
Nice, the dozens of spare fertilised eggs now officially grant that family tax breaks and potential government payments due to being actual children. Right? Hello?
Is this thing on?
It seems like the countries with official churches (Canada an exception) now have more religious freedom than the ones with no official state religion. While atheists are busy trying to strike “Under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance, states are using the Bible to define what a person is.
Can a frozen embryo be sued? Does it have property rights?
If you are talking about state religion, you should include Muslim countries in that too, for where Islam is established, there freedom is very limited indeed. And now, in India, with the increasing centrality of Hinduism, with the priority of Hindutva, you can scarcely say that this increases freedom for any except Hindus. And I think we could make the same case for other examples of religious establishment.
This is true; you are correct. The problem is getting the Supreme Court to admit that. This court is likely to side with Alabama.
I do think, however, it is important to note how long it took for religious freedom to become part of our national psyche. Most, if not all, of the colonies had an official religion. Many had rules that you had to go to church, or that you had to follow certain precepts of the church. Much of our law is still based on church dogma, such as marriage law has been.
The “colonists came here for religious freedom” trope is, to me, a dangerous one. It has been used to justify all sorts of things that are not, actually, religious freedom, but its opposite.
iknklast, #5:
Without wishing to derail the thread too much, there is a clear parallel with the trans movement insomuch as the claim that they just want the right to be free to be themselves actually turns out to mean making their belief the dominant one in all walks of life, from the law and science to the personal beliefs of all.
There is another parallel between the Pilgrims and the trans movement. One of the common claims about the Pilgrims is that they left England to escape persecution for their beliefs, but that ‘persecution’ was nothing more than being told ‘live your own lives the way you want to, believe what you want to believe, but no, you cannot force your beliefs on others’. Does that peculiar definition of ‘persecution’ sound at all familiar?
I don’t think that’s quite accurate about the Puritans – I think they were subject to various restrictions and/or deprivations because of their puritanism. Restrictions governing their practice of religion and schooling and the like.
A quick Google: “During the 1620s and 1630s, the conflict escalated to the point where the state church prohibited Puritan ministers from preaching. In the Church’s view, Puritans represented a national security threat because their demands for cultural, social, and religious reforms undermined the king’s authority.”
Omar #7
“God would have no trouble simultaneously interrupting every TV program on Earth in order to make his announcement, and in all languages.”
God is John Galt?
Side note: there’s a joke about Puritans in Twelfth Night. Sir Toby says Malvolio is a Puritan and Maria answers scornfully “The devil a Puritan he is, or anything else but a time-server.”
It was a Puritan who first advocated for true religious freedom in the colonies. Outside of Rhode Island, though, Roger Williams doesn’t get nearly enough recognition–his vision of America was far freer and more just than what we ended up with.
[…] a comment by Eric MacDonald on No exception for extrauterine […]
I find it a bit hard to believe that the Puritans endangered national security, as such, but it would be interesting to know precisely what is meant by that in your source, Ophelia. So far as undermining the King’s authority goes in respect of religion, that had to do with the fact that the Anglican settlement of the 16th century placed the King at the head of the Church of England, so that church doctrine, liturgy and practice was placed under the the control of Parliament as well as Convocation, which determined these things as the Roman Catholic Church did elsewhere, so that in England they were acting in the name of the King or as with Elizabeth, the Queen, although at that time the King or Queen had a right to intervene on their own authority sometimes, even though they seldom did.
The Puritans were members of the Church of England who believed that the Church of England was too catholic for their taste, so that in acting as they did they were acting contrary to the laws that governed the church at the time. And this is still the case with Anglicans, Baptists, Presbyterians and so on, who have their own structure and rules. The difference is that unity of religion is no longer thought to be necessary as it was then, and dissenters, as the Puritans were, were thought of as a threat to national unity. Perhaps that is what is meant by danger to national security.
Of course, what the Supreme Court of the US decided about abortion and what the Supreme Court of Alabama decided regarding frozen embryos, is doing essentially the same thing, as though everyone must believe that embryos or foetuses are human persons in the full sense (even though SCOTUS left it up to the states, which was clever, but canny ploy to leave it until later to make it universal), a very unpropitious belief when it comes to the issue of freedom for women, and not at all plausible.
Except for Henry VIII the Monarch seldom intervened directly in religious affairs, for even then the King was a symbol of national authority, who may at one time have had much more real power than the King has today, but even then it was administered for the most part not by the King but by the government, by Parliament, the courts and so forth. To undermine the King’s authority effectively meant a matter of disobeying the law, and that is still the case in Britain, since the King (or more abstractly, the Crown) still stands for state authority. Even so slight a thing as the Egg Authority acts under the King’s name. In Canada land owned by the state is still simply called Crown Land, and in that sense pertains to the government which acts as it does under the King’s authority. This still means under government authority, though of course, when the King had real power, Kings could act on their own authority, though even that was limited, and in general things were simply administered by the King’s ministers, at whatever level.
This is not meant to be captious, but Americans often misunderstand what King or Crown mean in the context of British government. King Charles III has very little authority, even though things done by the government are still carried out in the King’s name. Judges in England are called the King’s justices and administer the King’s justice. And so on.
Eric, what I take the source to mean is just that undermining the monarch’s authority inherently endangers national security. Weak monarch—>insecure nation. In a world with Trump and Putin in it I kind of see the point.
While I agree that Roger Williams should get more recognition, this sounds like just another one of those things I hate – we found one person who didn’t fit the mold, so the mold is wrong, so gotcha! I’m sure that’s not what you meant, but I do get tired of everyone dragging out the one Muslim or the one trans or the one whatever to disprove the overall dynamic we all can plainly see. And too many people give that too much credence.
I have a friend who is Muslim and is probably the most tolerant person I know. I don’t assume that changes what Islam is really about. He observes Ramadan and other practices, but he doesn’t throw acid in faces, he has long amiable chats with women who have their hair uncovered, but that doesn’t change what is what.
Sorry about the rant. This is a trend I see ALL THE TIME and I hate. Nothing personal. Just needed to blow off steam.
Yeah, that’s not what I meant, but I know where you’re coming from. I think Williams should get more recognition not because he makes the Puritans look good (after all, the other Puritans kicked him out of Massachusetts), but because he was (one of?) the first advocate(s) of true freedom of conscience, and not just for Christians.
Of course, Ophelia, in that sense the Puritans, while they may be thought to have undermined national security, even though that is hard to credit, really did undermine national unity, since the outcome was the English Civil War, which ushered in the disaster of the Commonwealth, whose end was celebrated when Charles II was welcomed back to the throne. And then of course, since he was in all but name a Catholic, and thus at odds with the nobility that had returned him to the throne, when his wife Catherine did not produce a male heir, Charles II made sure that his niece Mary wed William of Orange, and so the Stuart line was preserved through the reign of William and Mary after the so-called Glorious Revolution, when the fear was that his brother James of York (an undoubted Catholic) would assume the throne. Politics of the time all very complex and confusing. And then when Queen Anne did not marry and produce an heir, the House of Hanover followed, which continues today as the House of Windsor.
The problem at the beginning of all this is that Charles II actually violated the rights of Parliament, and thus precipitated the Civil War, which shows that he actually did not possess the powers that he laid claim to. As David Starkey is fond of repeating, Britain is a Crowned Republic in which kings, though they sometimes claimed powers which they did not possess, were meant to serve the public good, as a series of agreements between prince and people guaranteed the rights of both the lords and commons.
Sorry to be so long winded just to make a simple point!
No need to be sorry!
Meanwhile, a Canadian province just threw this into the budget announced today…
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-budget-2024-2025-in-vitro-covered-by-province-1.7122856
I am personally torn on the actual details of this one, and I have to wonder where exactly it came from… but the timing strikes me as amusing, to say the least :-P
Ibbica. Of course BC is a pretty liberal province all told. But it is important to note that, not only does BC now provide provincial support for IVF, but Canada as a whole has not had a law governing abortion almost, it seems, since the beginning of time. I think since the late 1970’s just to put that hyperbole into perspective.
The fact that in the US religion is overreaching itself and determining laws which should be considered, because of the US constitution, to illegitimately import religious tests into health-care for women, means that women are more and more being corralled by religion. This is a serious problem, and perhaps more emphasis should be placed on the way religion is being used in the United States to limit women’s freedom.
This is not something I hear a lot about when abortion is being discussed. This is not a secular issue. It is a direct intrusion of religion into the lives of women. Why is this not being said more loudly? The US is becoming more like Poland in its attitude towards abortion, where the Catholic Church has enormous influence. This is also becoming the case in the US. Too late to nip it in the bud, but surely a few saplings could be cut down!
“Canada as a whole has not had a law governing abortion almost, it seems, since the beginning of time. I think since the late 1970’s”
Essentially since 1988
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Morgentaler
An interesting result of ‘jury nullification’.
Prosecutors couldn’t get juries to convict Morgentaler on violating the anti-abortion laws, eventually resulting in a Supreme Court ruling against those laws
This is a case where it did good, though I can easily think of ways jury nullification can be harmful.
Eric, the trouble is, the Catholic church has enormous influence here too. Buying up all the hospital chains has been a real winner for them.
That, and the cooperation between the Catholics, Mormons, and Evangelicals, not just on abortion but other anti-woman laws.