You cannot feed, bathe, or coo over it, but you can be jailed if you purposely or accidentally touch it incorrectly. Last week, an Alabama court ruled that a petri dish is a womb, and if you trip or spill your Pepsi on a Zygote while transporting it from one place to another, you can go to prison. Yes, yes, I understand the science(well, some of it, anyway) and that a zygote is a stage below a diploid that eventually evolves into an embryo, but you get the point. My example was somewhat of an exaggeration, but it is still frighteningly too close to the truth. Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Parker, in his concurring opinion, promised the wrath of “holy God” would punish anyone who destroyed an embryo. Because of the separation of church and state, court rulings are supposed to be guided by law, not the idea of a man (or woman) in the sky. The party, who for years chastised liberals for playing God, now thinks it is wise to speak for God.
What is next?
Are we going to lock Junior up because he spent a little too much time in the bathroom with a bottle of lotion and the latest copy of National Geographic? Is a teen impregnated by her uncle or father going to be chained to a bed until she gives birth? If all these things sound improbable, remember it was not long ago that pro-choice advocates told women that conservatives would never take legal-safe abortion off the table. It is a proven winner for them in elections, they preached. Well, they caught the car, and instead of putting on the brakes, they jumped in the driver's seat and accelerated. The latest salvo—the in-vitro-fertilization ruling in Alabama—has them befuddled and backtracking. The lesson to be learned is that the debate for Republicans is not about children; it is about controlling the baby-makers.
It should not be surprising that a group of old white men raised in an era where putting an aspirin between a woman's or girl's knees was considered birth control is lost trying to play a doctor on TV with an issue that should not be a subject of legislation. When former Senator Claire McCaskill ran for reelection in 2012, one of the issues that swayed her reelection over her opponent, the late former Rep. Todd Akin, was abortion. Akin made his case by using the now infamous phrase legitimate rape. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,”said Akin. Recently, U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) held up the promotions of countless deserving servicepeople because he believed that military members traveling to get abortion services should not be allowed or funded. When asked about the IVF ruling in his home state, Tuberville, obviously ignorant of the science, waffled and issued incoherent doublespeak.
When the GOP voted to stop a program that lifted millions of children out of poverty and is constantly looking to cut food and health programs for living children, it is obvious their opposition to women’s health care is not about babies but controlling women's bodies.
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