The Republican party wants to turn America into a theocracy | Robert Reich
www.theguardian.com
Alabama’s supreme court ruling that frozen embryos are ‘children’ is a chilling example of the Republican party’s extremism

Alabama’s supreme court ruling that frozen embryos are ‘children’ is a chilling example of the Republican party’s extremism

In a case centering on wrongful-death claims for frozen embryos that were accidentally destroyed at a fertility clinic, the Alabama supreme court ruled last Friday that frozen embryos are “children” under state law.

As a result, several Alabama in-vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics are ceasing services, afraid to store or destroy any embryos.

The underlying issue is whether government can interfere in the most intimate aspects of people’s lives – not only barring people from obtaining IVF services but also forbidding them from entering into gay marriage, utilizing contraception, having out-of-wedlock births, ending their pregnancies, changing their genders, checking out whatever books they want from the library, and worshipping God in whatever way they wish (or not worshipping at all).

All these private freedoms are under increasing assault from Republican legislators and judges who want to impose their own morality on everyone else. Republicans are increasingly at war with America’s basic separation of church and state.

  • @[email protected]
    20•9 months ago

    In a concurring opinion in last week’s Alabama supreme court decision, Alabama’s chief justice, Tom Parker, invoked the prophet Jeremiah, Genesis and the writings of 16th- and 17th-century theologians. “Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God,” he wrote. “Even before birth, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.”

    Before joining the court, Parker was a close aide and ally of Roy Moore, the former chief justice of the Alabama supreme court who was twice removed from the job – first for dismissing a federal court order to remove an enormous granite monument of the Ten Commandments he had installed in the state judicial building, and then for ordering state judges to defy the US supreme court’s decision affirming gay marriage.

    Excuse me wtf

    • @BradleyUffnerEnglish
      7•9 months ago

      How do they square that with supporting the death penalty?

      • @[email protected]
        3•9 months ago

        Dogmatic ideology holding contradictory positions is a feature, not a bug. Break down whatever instincts for logic might exist, and people will believe anything.