When life imitates comedy, eh? Of what does this remind you?
On the one hand, Republicans maintain that they support the continued use of IVF, calling it both pro-family and pro-life. But on the other hand, many in the GOP agree with the central premise of the ruling that found that frozen embryos are children with equal rights, a contradictory position that now has them on the defensive on an issue that is supported by over 80% of Americans, including a majority of Republicans.
“That’s really at the crux of the ethics of it,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) told reporters on Tuesday. “How do our laws recognize the dignity of human life but also understand that the procedure that it enables is a life-creating procedure?” [HuffPo]
For me, it’s this:
They’re inching their feet down the runway, aren’t they? Every potential for human life must not only be recognized, but fulfilled as well. Which, in turn, suggests the entities that are suspending IVF in Alabama for legal reasons may be violating future law by not fulfilling every request for a viable embryo.
Yes, it’s a foray into the ridiculous.
This, of course, is if we, as a society, attempt to read the mind & moral code & intentions of a creature that, frankly, may not exist. This is the elephant in the room that is stepping on us.
Think that’s a joke? Try taking it seriously, instead. The statement that all life is sacred, which I’ll be the first to grant has certain practical benefits for society, comes from a religious tenet for which there is little to no objective proof that a possibly non-existent divinity endorses.
Rather than being dragged around by the dog’s nipped tail, it would benefit us greatly to recognize a core truth of our society: We, as a secular society, define the rules. No, we’re not Judeo-Christian, no matter how much some of us – not them, dammit, but some of us, and please stop being so fucking divisive – yell it, so we need not be subject to the rules of the Torah, the Bible, the Quran, or any other arbitrary religion’s rules.
Say it with me: We Define The Rules Of Our Society. Then think about that.
What does it imply? I’m sure it was on the minds of the Founding Fathers, and lead to the Establishment Clause, and I suspect if I had a better memory I could quote letter and verse from the The Federalist Papers. The implications of living in a society where causative chains are rife is of such a magnitude I don’t even know how to summarize the summary.
So let’s constrain this discussion to how it applies to IVF. Are embryos really human? They neither think, talk, nor often even survive to transform into fetuses, and thence to humans. It’s worth even asking if infants are human?
And I bring this up not to be thorough, but to make a point: if we decide an infant is not human, that doesn’t endanger infants. We have plenty of laws to protect them, don’t we?
And if we don’t, we can make them. <- THIS IS A POINT. PAY ATTENTION.
If we make the rules, rather than guess what they might be, then we can say that Infants and Humans are protected by law, and Embryos and Fetuses are not. Or we can say they’re partially protected, such as to say that, absent congenital fatal defect, only a contributor of genetic material may order its destruction. Or only the one who’ll be on the hook to carry it to term.
Or whatever, after sober, reasonable, and secular discussion, seems to benefit society, individually and as a whole, the most.
And not the damn silliness of a buffoon in black robes donning a metaphorical God-mask to declare what he thinks his God would say, if he’d only open his damn mouth and say it.
Ironically, Senator Rubio (R-FL) touches on the core of the problem we face when melding legal systems, which are basically fantastical creatures, with the ugly realities of biological reproduction:
“No one has IVF to destroy life, they have IVF to create life,” he added. “Unfortunately, you have to create multiple embryos, and some of those are not used, then you’re now in a quandary.”
Yes, so long as we try to drag a possibly non-existent divinity into the question, we won’t have happy answers. We need to take on this responsibility for ourselves: Will abortion damage society? Will destroying embryos damage society? Etc. I’m not here to answer these questions in this post; I’m here to say these are the bulls in the china shop that we keep ignoring in favor of the potentially non-existent’s rules, and we’d better start working on lassoing them, or they’re going to destroy the china shop.
That is, us.
