‘These Embryos Are Five Years Worth of Money, Sadness, and Hope. I Just Want to Be a Mom.’
The Alabama Supreme Court ruled last week that frozen embryos are legally considered children, which effectively banned IVF treatment in the state. Here’s how the decision impacts one couple.Crain, a journalist and artist who lives in Birmingham, has spent the past several years reporting on the loss of women’s rights to their own bodies in Alabama while dealing with the mental and physical toll of her own private fertility journey. She and her husband had been preparing to transfer their frozen embryos from their latest egg retrieval when she heard the news about the Supreme Court’s decision.“It's insane,” she says. “While I don't view my embryos as scared children sitting in the freezer calling for their mommy, I do feel that they are mine and no one else's. And right now I can't, can't touch them physically, mentally, spiritually, if I wanted to. I legally can't.”
Eric Garcia/Independent:
CPAC celebrates the Alabama IVF ruling – while Trump and Republicans distance themselves
Republican candidates and the GOP’s presumptive presidential candidate have come out opposing restrictions to IVF. But some conservatives at CPAC celebrated the Alabama ruling
Republicans have begun to sense that the ruling is unpopular. Last year, the Pew Research Center found that 42 per cent of Americans have either used fertility treatments or knew someone who has, particularly as women continue to have children older. On Friday, Mr Tuberville posted on X/Twitter that he had spoken with Alabama’s speaker of the house, saying that the legislature will take up a bill to protect IVF.
“We want everyone to have the opportunity to have kids,” he said. “IVF will remain legal and available in Alabama.”
Similarly, National Review reported that the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent a memo to Republican candidates for Senate instructing them to “clearly state your support for IVF and fertility-related services as blessings for those seeking to have children.”
Two of the candidates for Senate in swing states who appeared at CPAC – David McCormick in Pennsylvania and Kari Lake in Arizona – both put out statements saying they opposed restrictions to IVF.
John Archibald/Al.com:
Alabama Supreme Court is a theocracy
Alabama Supreme Court chief justice Tom Parker was downright gleeful.
He quoted Genesis in his sermon — I’m sorry, his concurring opinion — in the Alabama ruling that turned in vitro fertilization on its head by defining frozen embryos as children.
He quoted 17th century Dutch theologian Petrus Van Mastricht. Ya know, good ole Van Mastricht. He quoted a 16th century Bible – because older is closer to God, maybe – and quoted the Sixth Commandment, thou shalt not kill.
He quoted Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin and one of Roy Moore’s old pals at the Foundation for Moral Law in Montgomery. He wrote of the “wrath of God.”
The people of Alabama, he said, decided all this was public policy.
“It is as if the People of Alabama took what was spoken of the prophet Jeremiah and applied it to every unborn person in this state: ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, Before you were born I sanctified you.’”
Did I say it wasn’t a sermon? It was definitely a sermon.
Context for the above CNN video (the indictment remarks are at 00:41, listen to his reaction about conviction):
There’s too much out there on Biden’s weaknesses, not enough on Trump’s. So, here’s two more on Trump, starting with Dan Pfeiffer/”Message Box” on Substack:
Yet Another Underwhelming Trump Primary Win
Trump is on the glide path to the nomination, but he isn't improving his performance with swing voters
However, the real story is that Trump underperformed expectations and failed to expand his coalition. Once again, despite another dominant primary victory, the results highlighted Trump's vulnerabilities and offered a roadmap for defeating him in November.
Based on the exit polls, Trump’s campaign team should be popping some Xanax with the champagne over his win in South Carolina.
You cannot win the White House with the coalition that Trump is getting in these primaries. He must expand his coalition, persuade people who aren’t already on board, and get beyond the Big Lie-believing MAGA base. Through three primary contests, Trump has gained no ground.
Many here don’t believe it and don’t trust GOP voters. But they often have more sense than their candidates, at least if they aren’t white evangelical voters in South Carolina:
Walter Shapiro/The New Republic:
How Nikki Haley Can Beat Trump
She won’t win the Republican nomination, but by staying in the race she’s lowering Donald Trump’s chances of returning to the White House.
In a Tuesday speech giving her full-throated justification for staying in the race beyond her home state’s primary, Haley said, “Like most Americans, I have a handful of serious concerns about the former president. But I have countless serious concerns about the current president.” That line alone virtually guarantees that Haley will not magically appear as a surprise guest at the August Democratic convention.
Although the plucky Haley portrays herself as a loyal Republican, her limited—but scorching—attacks on Trump are worth examining in detail. She is appealing to a dwindling band of Reagan Republicans, suburban moderates and up-for-grabs independents. There are probably not enough of these voters to hand Haley a primary victory, but these are constituencies that the Joe Biden campaign will also target in November. Haley, in effect, is offering a crash course in how to woo swing voters who do not automatically assume that Trump is a racist and fascist out to trample the Constitution.
Biden is building an anti-Trump coalition, not a pro-Biden one. every message that keeps folks in that coalition is a good one, every entity that peels off voters (third party) is a bad one (see Sarah Longwell above).
David Rothkopf/Daily Beast:
A Vote for Trump Is a Vote for Putin—and a World in Danger
Global peace, Europe’s future, and our security are on the ballot in November. The final word on Ukraine’s future, NATO’s future, and Putin’s future will come from American voters.
It is time to remove from our analytical lexicon the terms that are commonly used to minimize the dangers associated with the Trump-MAGA-Putin alliance. After more than eight years of compiling evidence that demonstrates Russia’s efforts to co-opt the American right is perhaps the most successful intelligence operation of our time, we have to reject the transparent vocabulary of keyboard warriors that still cry “hoax” every time new and irrefutable evidence of GOP-Russia ties is presented.
In the past two weeks alone, there has been the evidence that the core of the GOP sham impeachment effort against President Biden turned on the testimony of a man with ties to Russian intelligence; Trump’s invitation to Putin to do “whatever the hell he wants” with Europe; the MAGA right’s decision to postpone further even considering aid to Ukraine; Tucker Carlson’s jaunt to Moscow to amplify the Kremlin’s lies about itself; the refusal of Trump to condemn the murder of Alexei Navalny in Russian prison; and the arrest of yet another American for no good reason in Russia.
Thomas Zimmer/”Democracy Americana” on Substack:
“Project 2025” Promises Revenge, Oppression, and Autocratic Rule
The Right’s plans for a return to power are driven by a radicalizing siege mentality and a desperate desire to restore dominance
One of the more frustrating aspects of studying and talking about American politics is that if you simply trace the radicalization of the Right and the Republican Party, there is a good chance a mainstream audience will dismiss you as a leftwing conspiracy theorist or an unhinged “activist.” Donald Trump’s outrageousness notwithstanding, it is difficult to convey to people who don’t pay much attention to politics how much the power centers of conservative politics have been taken over by anti-democratic extremism. One way to deal with this problem is to get people to actually read and listen to what emanates from the Right. If you don’t believe and can’t trust my (lefty / liberal) assessment, maybe you can believe them? In that spirit, I think it’s worth spending time diving deep into Kevin Roberts’ “Promise to America” – with lots of extensive quotes, as it is important to get a sense of what these people sound like when they are not being sanitized and normalized by mainstream media coverage. This will serve as Part I of my dissection of “Project 2025,” focusing on the worldview and ideas that are guiding the plans on the Right; there will also be a Part II in which I will look more closely at what those plans entail, and the strategies for how to realize them and turn America into the kind of society the reactionary Right desires.
New Details Suggest Senior Trump Aides Knew Jan. 6 Rally Could Get Chaotic
Text messages and interviews show that Stop the Steal leaders fooled the Capitol police and welcomed racists to increase their crowd sizes, while White House officials worked to both contain and appease them.
On Dec. 19, President Donald Trump blasted out a tweet to his 88 million followers, inviting supporters to Washington for a “wild” protest.
Earlier that week, one of his senior advisers had released a 36-page report alleging significant evidence of election fraud that could reverse Joe Biden’s victory. “A great report,” Trump wrote. “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
The tweet worked like a starter’s pistol, with two pro-Trump factions competing to take control of the “big protest.”
From Cliff Schecter on John Oliver’s Clarence Thomas offer: