Alabama IVF Ruling Highlights the Hypocrisy in "Pro-Choice" Philosophy
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In the US, we have wildly inconsistent views on how and when we value life, especially when it comes to the preborn. But one position that has been the most consistent for the pro-choice worldview is wantedness or choice grants value and moral consideration.
For example, if a woman has an abortion, that is considered to be her right. “It’s a clump of cells,” or a “parasite,” compared to cancer, and so on. However, if a woman has a miscarriage, it’s a tragedy. People rarely express opinions like Twitch streamer “Destiny,” who compared a miscarriage to mourning a “missed opportunity” similar to missing a romantic connection on Craig’s List, during his abortion debate with Trent Horn on the “Whatever” podcast. “Philosophy bros” can belittle the loss of human life, even by force, in a similar way.
When famous TikToker Chelsea Hart revealed to the internet she had lost a child, folks from the political Left attacked her after learning the recollection of her brutal miscarriage was actually an abortion. Women who experienced both insisted they were different and scolded Hart for how she sought sympathy after seeing her child’s body come out in tiny pieces and passing out in a puddle of sweat.
The key difference is in one scenario, the mother plays God. In the other, the mother is reminded she is mortal, life is fleeting, and it is precious.
What would happen if a drunk driver collided with a pregnant woman, resulting in a miscarriage or stillbirth? If that woman was on her way to her abortion appointment, that would be totally fine and her choice. But since she never had the chance, the drunk driver is liable for the death of her child.
If a pregnant woman is murdered, we expect double homicide charges. If a terrible boyfriend slipped his girl a pill to cause an abortion, he should be charged for that loss of life, even though that mother has legal immunity to kill that same child.
The pro-choice community acts as though the infant doesn’t have any rights at all (unless they’re very far along in the pregnancy, but that sentiment is waning). But if the mother chooses to keep her child, anyone who would rob her of that choice should face some sort of liability, whether criminal or civil.
Even pro-life ideology affirms this belief with laws such as the Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004 signed by George W. Bush, which says that any person who causes the death or injury to an unborn person will be charged with a separate offense, in addition to charges related to the mother, yet the bill allows the violence of abortion with the consent of the mother.
But the outrage against the recent Alabama IVF ruling flies in the face of this principle. In 2020, a patient wandered into a cryogenic nursery through an unsecured door. They removed some embryos and accidentally dropped them. Three sets of parents argued the clinic was supposed to secure and monitor their embryos at all times, so they wanted to sue the clinic for the wrongful death of a minor, which is civil and not criminal. The clinic argued the embryos couldn’t qualify for that law, but since the law has covered preborn children in the past, the court could not see a reason to exclude an embryo based on their location.
So, this case is about a big business not wanting to be liable to grieving parents, and it’s remarkable how many people are furious that parents can hold the clinic responsible for clear negligence. The embryos were in their care; the parents spent a lot of time and money on their existence. Why should they not be able to hold the clinic accountable?
They didn’t choose to lose their children. And, yes, they are children because they are progeny. They are human—the same species as their parents—and they were alive. So, why isn’t the pro-choice crowd celebrating accountability against a corporation that allowed their choice to be taken away?
I’ll be gracious to many and assume the facts of the case are widely unknown. Most coverage is about the possible end of IVF and Republicans scrambling to make sure this isn’t an electoral issue. But here’s a question for you: why is the acknowledgment that clinics are accountable to these parents amounting to the demolishment of IVF? Isn’t that concerning?
But for those who do know, they’re concerned about the possibility of granting personhood to embryos and a swift end to abortion. Well, the case didn’t grant an embryo “personhood” or tie the definition of a “child” in the civil law regarding wrongful death into criminal homicide. It was simply about wrongful death.
So, do “pro-choice” activists genuinely value the “choice” to have a family, or is that all rhetoric to rationalize abortion?
People fear what sort of regulations may be brought on by the legislature due to this ruling and clinics have already paused service in Alabama. But when you hold the power of life and death in your hand, and parents are entrusting you with the care of their progeny, accountability and ethics shouldn’t be a hard ask. If this ruling is going to break the IVF industry, perhaps we need to take a step back and ask if it needs to be broken.
When Chelsea Hart laid out the gruesome details of her abortion from the pill, she was demonized by her ideological peers not only because she grieved and was traumatized over her child’s passing, but also because the horrific description could be used as fodder by anti-abortionists. Not only did they feel she wasn’t entitled to her pain; they hated that she vividly expressed the reality of abortion, even an early one. She offered a peek behind the curtain at something the abortion lobby widely downplays.
Parents who have used IVF and are currently paying a hefty fee to keep their progeny frozen should be aware of how negligent these clinics are capable of being, even if that results in a major shift in the industry.
Secular Pro-Life noted if people can recognize that nonreligious people and men mourn miscarriages, they should be able to recognize that the nonreligious and men can mourn abortion. “These shouldn’t be surprising or confounding ideas. I think some people resist acknowledging these reactions not because they are such foreign concepts but because people view these reactions as threats to pro-abortion narratives.”
This is also true regarding the Alabama IVF ruling. These parents are largely being ignored because their grief is not only a threat to IVF, but to abortion as well. After all, the best defense of the clinic was that these parents treated their embryos like property by agreeing for them to be destroyed either after a certain number of years or through possible donation and experimentation. The Alabama Supreme Court didn’t weigh in because that wasn’t briefed in the trial court, but the clinic has a point. When you can customize children and discard them, that dehumanizes and commodifies your offspring. Abortion and IVF are big businesses that do not want to be interrupted, and humanizing an embryo will call into question the practices of both.
So, the “choice” being taken away from these parents doesn’t matter to many activists. The preservation of their ideology and capability to customize families, even at the unnecessary cost of millions of lives, are what matters.
These parents may very well go on to lose in court. How they chose to treat their progeny in the contract may grant the defendants a waiver or open the door to other defenses. But the courts cannot dismiss the fact that these embryos, which were carelessly cared for by a corporation, were somebody’s children who lived and were killed.
