GOPers Trying To Have IVF Both Ways, It’s Wayyy Too Late For That

Is there no end to GOP hypocrisy and lying? Okay, stupid question. There is no bottom to that abyss. For the moment we have a whole lot of GOPers trying to escaped the corner they’ve painted themselves into when it comes to IVF and their insistence that “life begins at conception” and has to be “protected” at all costs from that moment on. They are desperate to find a way out of the newest self-created mess and want to have it both ways when it comes to whether frozen embryos created via IVF are “babies.” Or not, at least not quite yet, as in not until they’ve been implanted into the womb.

WE  CAN’T  LET  THEM  GET  AWAY  WITH  IT!!!

By now you’ve heard all about the Alabama’s Supreme Court Ruling that has stopped In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) in the state. It could impact (probably will) other infertility treatments as well. Conservatives are beside themselves today. Their whole “life begins at conception” argument has been exposed as the hypocrisy it is. Why do I say that? Because overwhelmingly conservatives who say they are staunchly pro-life, “Christians” and even freaking Evangelicals overwhelmingly approve of IVF, and it seems think the Alabama Supreme Court has gone to far!

There are too many families that are families due to IVF including anti-abortion, Christian conservatives ones (including Mike Pence and “Mother”) and so many currently trying. Yet the process itself winds up killing off embryos, which is why extra ones get implanted during a procedure instead of just one. It fall well short of a high success rate. Then there’s the question of what to do with no longer needed embryos. The point is, some polling I saw on the news today indicates what I said above which is that even with anti-abortion types support for IVF is overwhelming. We’re talking eighty, even ninety percent support depending on which sub-category of “abortion is murder” believers.

This is a real dilemma for GOPers because of the “life begins at conception” mantra that’s part of Republican DNA even if they don’t personally believe it. These days GOP politician had better talk. and more importantly vote (on legislation) like they believe it. If they don’t they’re toast. However there’s a reason IVF creates a batch, instead of only one or two embryos and freezes them. When it comes time to implant them more (most) embryos created via IVF don’t “take” and die off. Which means in hard core anti-abortion minds “babies get killed.” These same people who say life begins at conception know embryos get killed off during the process, yet they support IVF, and other treatments for couples dealing with infertility! Put bluntly, they don’t truly believe their bullshit about life beginning with conception. At least not when it’s inconvenient for them.

To me it comes down to a simple question for the anti-abortion fanatics, one they don’t want to think about much less answer:

Are frozen embryos “babies” or NOT?

Whether it’s the old-fashioned way or via a process in a lab a sperm makes it inside and egg and fertilizes it. Soon, that egg divides into two part and things continue to the point where there’s an embryo. In the lab the embryos get frozen until an attempt(s) is made to implant some of them in the hopes one of them will implant in a woman’s uterus and she becomes pregnant. Like I said, most don’t implant. Either because of damage during the process or as in nature some embryos simply don’t attach to the uterine wall and move right on out the bulk of the embryos, the “babies” as anti-abortion types calls them get killed. Because “science doesn’t protect them enough” or some other weird reason they dream up.

Still, as I’ve said even if many anti-abortion people aren’t bat-sh*t fanatics the fact is that “Life begins at conception” has been the foundation of the entire anti-abortion movement. The whole thing is built on the “moral” principle that once that egg is fertilized it’s a “baby,” a human life deserving of every possible protection to make sure it is born. (Of course, after it’s born they could care less about what happens to it, especially if it’s born female but that’s another topic) Yes, from the beginning the most hard-core fanatics have opposed fertility treatments (IVF isn’t the only one) and I recall days when “test tube babies” were railed against. Even after they became you know, actual babies turned into growing children and adults!

However, over time even conservative Christians became accepting and supportive of IVF and other treatments. Thankful even, especially those wanting/needing to utilize it, as well as family and friends who wanted them to be able to have children. More importantly, they became supportive of it in overwhelming numbers.  Keep in mind IVF is a complicated, exhausting process and also an expensive one. Most who go through it know every detail, including the fact that most of the embryos created won’t result in a pregnancy. Become babies. Most of those embryos will die off during the implantation process, or at some point having sat frozen in storage will be discarded when no longer needed. But, but but “that’s killing babies” to them on one level. On the other hand, in parts of themselves they don’t want to look at they know those embryos aren’t really babies at all. Just a clump of cells that might become a baby IF everything goes exactly right.

Well, more often than not when it comes to a fertilized egg thing do NOT go “exactly right.” Whether in nature and the old-fashioned way of making babies or in a lab followed by a hospital/clinic that does an implantation procedure.  Conservatives, including and especially anti-abortion people know this. They know it. And long have. Yet they’ve grown to support and utilize medical science and technology.

So does human life really begin at conception, and is that fertilized egg/embryo a “baby” or not? These people have gotten away with fudging on the “life begins at conception” for far too long. The way IVF and infertility treatments in general came to gain widespread acceptance, even with “Christians” (including self-described Evangelicals) and anti-abortion types give LIE to the foundational principle of the anti-abortion (and anti-contraception) movement.  It turns out they either didn’t really mean it, or have changed their minds.

And the Alabama Supreme Court ruling has forced the issue!

As NBC reports, GOPers are mostly in a panic, either dodging the question with “I will have to look at it” type nonsense or trying to stumble through some sort of non-answer answer. Elected Republicans know damn well what a disaster they have created in their zeal to get the SCOTUS they wanted. But the Dobbs decision has turned out to be an unmitigated disaster for the GOP, at least at the national level. Red state’s legislatures were raring to go however and raced to see who could pass the most draconian laws. To their fury and dismay voters even in RED states strongly approved abortion RIGHTS ballot initiatives.

But like I said, conservatives are trying to find a way out of the corner they’ve painted themselves into. This court decision, and likely ones to come have added a fresh coat of paint (and dare I say nasty brown organic human waste) around the corner GOPers are in. But damn they are already trying. In Alabama yesterday legislation was floated that would allow IVF by creating a “distinction”, or re-definition of when life begins. Instead of “at conception”, it looks like conservatives are going to try and sell people on a newly made up concept that goes something like:

Well, we didn’t REALLY mean at conception. It’s not a LIFE until it’s implanted in the uterus! There. See? We aren’t hypocrites. Not at all!

Bullshit, bullshit BULL SHIT I say.

It’s a blatant attempt to move the goalposts and again I say we can’t let them get away with it. We have to hold their feet to the fire. One an egg is fertilized with a sperm it begins to grow and soon becomes an embryo that can one day be used in an IVF procedure. Then it’s frozen until needed.

Try doing that with a premature baby born too early in pregnancy to survive. Say at sixteen weeks, or even twenty weeks. I could poke holes in this crap conservatives are going to try and sell all day long.  But it still comes down to the point the entire anti-abortion movement was built on.

“Life” as in a “baby” either begins at conception or it doesn’t. I don’t believe a baby is a baby until it’s born and can breathe on its own, or born far enough along during pregnancy that with (sometimes intense and hugely expensive) medical help it can breathe and fully function like a healthy newborn carried to term can. Potential life is not life.

GOPers, including and especially hard core anti-abortion types are trying like hell to revise the terms of the debate. To redefine the debate on their terms. To have things both ways as in “well, life begins at conception and even a fertilized egg is a baby deserving of every legal protection possible. Except not ALL the time. Sometimes, as in say for something like an infertility treatment like IVF an embryos isn’t actually a human life, a “baby” after all! At least not  until it’s been successfully transplanted and a woman becomes pregnant.

So I’ll say it again: They are trying to have it BOTH ways and we CAN’T LET THEM GET AWAY WITH IT!

Most embryos that pass down the fallopian tubes don’t even implant in the uterine wall and become pregnancies. If the religious fanatics who lament over the life and health of a pregnant woman but insist no matter what she has to carry on the pregnancy say her injury or death is “God’s will” I have a message for you. Since every day around this world tens, hell up over at least a hundred million fertilized eggs/embryos pass right through the uterus and out of a woman’s body then if it’s all “God’s will” then God is the greatest, most prolific abortionist of them all!

I realize I’m harping on my point like Rachel Maddow (except I’m sure as hell nowhere near as smart or talented) but I really want this to sink in even if repetition has gotten annoying. I’m sick to my stomach about how the GOP and fanatics are already trying to spin their way out of this. Because unless we call them out, over and over they will muddle the issue. Maybe enough to save just enough votes in the right places in the right states.

A frozen embryo is either a baby or it’s not. Make sure the debates are centered on that one point. And I think my example of what would happen if you froze a fetus even at less than sixteen weeks is a good way to stop them in their tracks.  Keep things well defined and simple. And finally consider the longer term if we are able to do so and win this won on our terms. Because once the “life begins with conception” is ruined as an argument for the fanatics it then become about where to draw the line.

Some of the whack-jobs say “fetal heartbeat” and use “electrical signals” of tissue that is nothing resembling a heart to define “heartbeat. Some religions speak of “the quickening”, the time when a fetus can be felt moving around in the womb. In much of the Jewish faith, life doesn’t begin until a newborn draws its first breath! Who’s beliefs get to make the call?

That was the genius of Roe. No restrictions prior to fetial viability outside the womb. With more advance intervention that time of gestation has shrunk but there’s still a clear cutoff point. After that it’s not a difficult matter for medical professionals to come up with fairly good standards on what constitutes a threat to the health or life of the mother and would allow later term abortions. Science folks. It’s damned solid on this stuff.

For now, if we have a chance to force the fanatics to admit life doesn’t begin at conception after all. That their hypocrisy in trying to redefine when “life begins”, and that their whole foundation that’s their anti-abortion movement was built on has been a LIE then WE regain some control.

Either a frozen embryo awaiting implantation is a “baby” or it isn’t. It’s that simple so force people to think and talk about it as that simple choice. Don’t let the GOP get away with trying to have it both ways and carve out a “Well, sometimes it’s a baby but sometimes it’s not” argument.

Somehow I don’t think the couple’s who sued over the destruction of those embryos (looking for a financial windfall) meant for things to turn out like this. But we are where we are. And a LOT of people who’ve been counting on IVF are S.O.L.