...About Abortion and IVF

Abortion and IVF both exist for the same reason, the same purpose: to let a woman choose when to have a child.

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
I'm Stephen Monteith and I'm here totalk about abortion and IVF. I did
a podcast about abortion itself a coupleof years ago when the Supreme Court was
in the process of deciding, yetagain, whether a woman had the right

(00:28):
to control medical decisions about her ownbody. That decision didn't go so well.
Roe v. Wade, which wasessentially the law of the land for
almost half a century at that point, got overturned, and the so called

(00:53):
pro life movement celebrated a major victoryfor their side. Well, a lot
of people at the time were decidingwhat the next step would be. Some

(01:17):
people were focused on trying to tryingto protect abortion through legislative means, while
other people, more nefarious people werelooking for the next step in their war

(01:40):
on reproductive rights. Let me giveyou some background on the latest chapter in
the ongoing farce of the pro lifemovement. Earlier this year, the Alabama
Supreme Court ruled in a case thatinvolved the unintentional destruction of several embryos at

(02:06):
a fertility clinic in Mobile, Alabama. Some families had contracted with the clinic
to have an in vitro fertilization proceduredone now this is basically they take some
eggs. In case you don't knowIVF, they take some eggs from the

(02:30):
mother and they fertilize them, andthen they try to reimplant an egg so
that the mother can get pregnant,which which she obviously wouldn't have been able

(02:51):
to do on her own. Now, because this procedure is so delicate,
and because it's obviously being used onwomen who have had women who have had
trouble getting pregnant in the past,the IVF clinics will usually take more than

(03:12):
one egg at a time, sometimesthree or more eggs, and they'll and
they'll fertilize each of them. Andwhile one egg is waiting, after they've
implanted one egg and they're waiting tosee whether it will produce a child,

(03:34):
the other eggs are put in storage. They're frozen basically. Well, at
this clinic, a patient, notone of the three, but a patient
wandered into the storage area it wasn'tit wasn't properly locked up and accidentally destroyed

(04:00):
some of these preserved embryos, thesefertilized eggs, and the three families decided
to sue the clinic, but notbecause not because of a breach of contract

(04:21):
or anything like that, but becausethe destruction of the embryos was considered to
be essentially the death of a minor. Now, a circuit court judge ruled
that cryo preserved in vitro embryos donot fit within the definition of a person.

(04:48):
However, the case made it toAlabama's Supreme Court, where the Chief
Justice decided that both the Alabama theConstitution and the United States Constitution recognize that
life is granted by God, andindeed that all laws are based on that

(05:13):
idea. You can you can takea few moments if you want to be
horrified that an actual chief justice ofa state supreme court made that decision.
Basically, the result was that thecourt ruled that life begins at conception,

(05:41):
even if that conception takes place outsidethe womb. And this is exactly the
kind of ruling that so called prolife advocates have always sought from the various
courts and legislatures of America. Theywant that to be the definition of life,

(06:04):
that it begins at conception, nomatter where that conception takes place,
no matter how it takes place.But like with so many people about so
many things. They don't seem tohave considered all the implications of getting what

(06:25):
they want. At least that's theway it seems. The vote, by
the way, on the Supreme Courtwas a vote of eight to one,
and the lone dissenting opinion in thedecision warned that the ruling would almost certainly

(06:48):
end the creation of frozen embryos throughin vitro fertilization in Alabama. You see
the re the reason that they takeso many when some when a clinic is
performing in vitro fertilization. The reasonthat they take so many eggs at once

(07:15):
is because it can take several triesat implanting an embryo, and since many
insurers won't cover IVF, the costis already so high that many patients can't
even afford it. And to keepthe cost from rising even higher, they

(07:36):
take multiple eggs at once and fertilizethem and then freeze them until they're needed,
until or unless they're needed. Andyou may be wondering what happens if
they succeed on the first try,what do they do with all the unused
embryos? Well, there are severaloptions or that, and in fact,

(08:03):
all the three families involved in thelawsuit had agreed to what to one or
more of those options. They hadagreed to allow any unused embryos to be
experimented on and or destroyed after acertain amount of time had passed. An

(08:24):
embryo isn't left frozen forever. Butwhen you think about it, when you
think about this ruling that life beginsat conception, and that a fertilized egg
an embryo should be treated like achild, that the death of that embryo

(08:46):
or the destruction of that embryo canbe treated like the death of a minor,
you can imagine that no fertility clinicis going to want to continue operating
under those circumstances. And indeed,after the ruling came down, one by

(09:13):
one, fertility clinics in Alabama beganto shut down their services, and women
who were undergoing such treatments they hadto flee the state to find other providers
for their care, just like womenwho have to leave the state in order

(09:33):
to get an abortion. The Alabamalegislature, which is of course majority Republican,
they all started running around like chickenswith their heads cut off. They
rushed to pass protections for both ivoryfor both IVF providers and patients against both

(10:00):
criminal and civil liabilities if embryos theycreated were damaged or destroyed. Now,
obviously these kinds of protections would essentiallyoverrule the Alabama Supreme Court's decision. So
you got to wonder why, why, you know, they even bothered having

(10:28):
this this trial. They spent monthsgoing through all these different courts trying to
get somebody to say that life beginsat conception, and then they turn around
and boom, They've got this rulingsuddenly that seems to say everything that they

(10:54):
want, but has forced the legislatureto come up with all these laws that
counteracted. You see the decision thatthe Alabama Supreme Court came to. I
told you that it was based onthe US Constitution and the Alabama Constitution.

(11:20):
There's an amendment in the Alabama Constitutioncalled the Sanctity of Unborn Life Act.
It was passed by the voters ofAlabama overwhelmingly in twenty eighteen, and it
basically immediately criminalized abortion. When andnot quite yet, not immediately, but

(11:52):
as soon as the United States SupremeCourt overturned Roe v. Wade, that's
when it immediately criminalized abortion. Again. It seems the pro life movement just
didn't think things all the way through, because that very same Sanctity of Unborn

(12:16):
Life Act is what Alabama's Supreme Courtused to justify essentially criminalizing IVF. It's
been pointed out that any protections theAlabama legislature ends up passing could simply find
itself being challenged in some future courtcase in the state, and the Supreme

(12:41):
Court will come to the same conclusionand overturn those protections. This is just
so many more or useless things thatthey're doing, so many things that can
foreseeably be problematic down the road,but hey, they got to do something

(13:09):
to show that they support IVF.I mean, there are so many people
Democrats and Republicans, pro life andpro choice, who are big fans of
the procedure, who are big fansof women being able to bear children when

(13:30):
suddenly they couldn't before. It's notjust the Alabama GOP that's rushing to show
support for it. Republican politicians acrossthe country, especially candidates for high office,
have come out in favor of invitro fertilization. Even Donald Trump and
Nikki Haley were quick to pledge theirsupport. This was before Nicki Haley suspended

(13:54):
her presidential campaign. And again,you really have to wonder why so many
of them are trying to show supportfor this when this ruling again is exactly
what they wanted. I mean,aside from the fate of the unused embryos,

(14:20):
a lot of religions are just playingagainst IVF in general. The Catholic
Church is officially against it as theyare against abortion. There are a lot
of evangelicals who are starting to becomemore vocal against it as well. Fundamentalists
on the right. They've been exertingmore and more influence in recent elections,

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and it's not outside the realm ofimagination to think that this might be their
next big cause. That they're notall secretly celebrating that IVF is next on
the chopping block after abortion rights.So why don't Republicans just come out and

(15:18):
embrace this ruling, Because as usual, they're more concerned with getting elected than
with sticking to their principles. AfterRoe v. Wade was overturned in twenty
twenty two, it was just afew months before the midterm elections, I

(15:46):
did a podcast about the midterm elections, and I pointed out that it's unusual
for a president of one party toget elected one year and then two years
later, during a mid term elections, hold on to control of Congress.

(16:06):
Usually people will vote for a presidentof one party, and then two years
later they'll vote for a Congress ofanother party. It's happened to almost every
president. But after a row wasoverturned, Democrats were quick to emphasize protecting

(16:30):
abortion rights as part of their nationalstrategy, and Republicans, while celebrating the
ruling, were quick to downplay itsimportance. In my own district in Virginia,
Republican candidate Jen Kiggins tried to characterizeabortion as a shiny distraction from real

(16:56):
issues, and while Kiggins went onto be elected to the House of Representatives
that November, she only became partof a very slim Republican majority in the
House, while the Senate remained majorityDemocrat. Like I said, Congress usually

(17:18):
flips in the mid terms, andmany pundits at the time had predicted a
red wave, as they call it, that would give Republicans a commanding majority
in both houses of Congress. Butthat wave never materialized, and the issue

(17:41):
of abortion was a major contributing factoras to why. Even this last November,
when Virginia was was holding a locallegislative elections, the debate over reproductive
rights helped Democrats regain control over bothchambers of the legislature, and that lesson

(18:12):
has not been lost on Republicans.In addition to de emphasizing their positions on
abortion rights while still trying to winvictories in those areas, they are rushing
to pledge support for IVF. Now, this is a presidential election year,

(18:37):
and while they're very eager to installmore judges who will issue rulings like the
one in Alabama, they need toat least appear like they want to protect
IVF. There was a non bindingresolution passed in the House of Representatives pledging

(18:59):
support for IVF. But since it'snon binding, it's not a law.
It's not like they're actually going todo anything to protect IVF. They're just
it's basically a glorified press release.As the saying goes, actions speak louder
than words. Democrats in the UnitedStates Senate tried to pass actual IVF protections

(19:27):
on the federal level, but Republicanshave blocked it, and they use the
same justification that they do for abortionopposition. They say that states should decide.

(19:48):
That's the one argument in the abortiondebate that I've never understood. Regardless
of whether you think abortion is rightor wrong, you should want the same
standard to apply everywhere. You can'tthink that abortion is right in some states

(20:10):
but wrong in other states, andbelieve me, they don't. They want
it to be a state by stateI mean a state by state basis for
overturning abortion rights because they know they'renot going to get it at the federal

(20:30):
level. They'd like to, butfor now they're content to just have things
like Alabama's Constitutional amendment. They're contentto have just state imposed abortion bans and
effect until they can actually get aRepublican majority in Congress and a Republican president.

(21:15):
Sorry, this is all just veryupsetting for me. I can't stand
hypocrisy, and I certainly can't standit on an issue this big. Either
you think every fertilized egg is ahuman that needs to be protected under the

(21:37):
law, in which case, inaddition to opposing abortion, you should also
oppose IVF, or you support IVFand you support abortion because you recognize that
a small bunch of cells is justa small bunch of cells. You can't

(22:00):
have it both ways. Anyone whotries to is a hypocrite who doesn't care
about anything except getting elected. Oneof those hypocrites is the Speaker of the
House of Representatives, Mike Johnson.Johnson is a co sponsor on a bill

(22:22):
that's in the House called the Lifeat Conception Act, which is exactly what
you think it is. He,like many of his Republican colleagues, wants
to ban all abortions on the groundsthat a fertilized egg is not fundamentally different

(22:42):
from any human being. But whenasked recently about his support for IVF,
he fumbled his way through the answer, saying, it's something that we've got
to grapple with, brave new world. IVF only been invented in the early

(23:03):
nineteen seventies. And for those ofyou who are as bad at math as
Republicans are at sex education, thenineteen seventies were half a century ago.
Even a politician should have been ableto figure out the implications of this new
technology by now, and I'm certainthat they have. I'm certain that they're

(23:30):
being hypocritical on purpose. Some arebeing hypocritical because they don't want to appear
to be as fringe as the restof their party. A speaker's got to
at least look like he cares aboutwhat other people care about. After all,
others are being hypocritical because they don'treally care about the issue and therefore

(23:52):
feel free to waffle back and forthon it. They say they care about
every fertilized embryo when they want torail against abortion, but when they want
to support IVF, they say it'sdifferent somehow, even if they can't figure
out how it's different. The reasonthey can't is because it's not different.

(24:21):
And it's well past time that wethe voters, forced our leaders to either
be consistent in their purported principles oradmit the real reason they're against preserving the
life of fertilized embryos some times butnot other times. The next time a
politician tells you they support IVF,ask them if they also support abortion rights.

(24:45):
If they say no, then demandto know why. Don't let them
wiggle out by saying, well,in one case, we're talking about trying
to start life, and in theother we're talking about trying to end life.
Life gets ended either way. Don'tlet them pretend, and don't you
pretend that one way is good andthe other way is bad, because guess

(25:11):
what, there is a consistent positionon this issue, the right to choose.
Human beings have the right to choosewhen to begin having a family.

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That choice cannot be forced on themin either direction. A woman can't or
rather shouldn't be forced to have achild, and neither should she be forcibly
denied the opportunity to have one.Abortion and IVF both exist for the same

(25:59):
reason, the same purpose, tolet a woman choose when to have a
child. That's the principle. That'sthe position that everyone should support. It's
all about the right to choose.You know, when the Supreme Court overturned

(26:37):
Rove Wade, they basically fell backon originalism, the idea that the original
intent of the founders should be whatguides all their decision making, and they
decided that abortion just wasn't one ofthe freedoms the Founders wanted to protect.

(26:59):
They're wrong, though, whether itwas specifically on the founder's minds or not,
they believed in the freedom of choice. The rights to abortion and IVF
both helped protect that freedom of choice, and we the people have a responsibility

(27:19):
to protect those rights. The federalgovernment, as presently constituted will not enshrine
the right to an abortion. Solong as there's a Republican majority in even
one House of Congress or a Republicanpresident in the White House, abortion rights

(27:44):
will never become the law of theland. Hell, last year, one
Republican Senator, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, yes, the same Alabama that we've
been talking about, was able tosingle handedly block over four hundred and fifty
military appointments, including blocking the appointmentof new chiefs of staff for the Army

(28:07):
and the Air Force for almost anentire year. He did this in protest
of a new Department of Defense policythat covered the expenses of pregnant service members
who needed to travel out of stateto get abortions. The reason they'd need
to travel out of state, ofcourse, is because ROEPI Wade was overturned,
and so many states have so manyrestrictions on it already. So it's

(28:32):
not just people like Senator Tuberville andSpeaker Johnson who need to be removed from
power in DC, its state legislaturesand executives all across the country. Who
need to be replaced with leaders whowill take steps to expand access to reproductive
freedom. And of course we needto make sure we re elect Joe Biden

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as president so Donald Trump can't dowhat he said he'd do and sign a
national abortion ban, and so thatthe next time there's a vacancy on the
Supreme Court, it's filled by someonewho believes in a right to privacy,
not by another justice like the threethat Trump appointed while he was in office.

(29:23):
Elections matter, local elections, stateelections, congressional elections, presidential elections,
at every point, at every vote, you need to be willing to
stand up for your rights, becauseif you don't, how can you expect

(29:48):
to hold on to them. Youhave the right to decide when to start
having a family, but only foras long as we all come together to
protect that right. Thank you forlistening. I'll talk too more later