Frozen Fetal Personhood
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A Good Day To Advocate for Better Healthcare
If there are subjects you’d like to see or improvements made, please let me know using the comment button below. One item in work is how some medical networks are choosing to not accept patients from Medicare Advantage plans because these commercial insurers are driving down what they will pay providers to keep their profits up. More on this later.
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Alabama Supreme Court - Frozen Embryos are Children
According to the Washington Post, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled Friday that frozen embryos are people and someone can be held liable for destroying them, a decision that reproductive rights advocates say could imperil in vitro fertilization (IVF) and affect the hundreds of thousands of patients who depend on treatments like it each year.
The Alabama case focused on whether a patient who mistakenly dropped and destroyed other couples’ frozen embryos could be held liable in a wrongful-death lawsuit. The court ruled the patient could, writing that it had long held that “unborn children are ‘children’” and that that was also true for frozen embryos, affording the fertilized eggs the same protection as babies under the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.
To give a patient the best chance at a pregnancy, multiple embryos are created in the hopes that a patient can try again if an attempt at a pregnancy fails. As a result, as many eggs as possible are often fertilized and kept frozen.
In Alabama, voters passed a ballot measure in 2018 that granted fetuses full personhood rights but did not mention frozen embryos. After the fall of Roe, a near-total abortion ban went into effect in the state. Alabama now accounts for nearly half of all criminal cases related to pregnancy across the country, according to a tally by Pregnancy Justice.
At least 11 states have broadly defined personhood as beginning at fertilization in their state laws. There is another effect of fetal personhood and that is that the fetus may now have more rights than the mother. In severe medical situation you can expect to see court ordered forced cesarean sections. Here is a reference.
I’m pretty sure that they will come after contraception next. SCOTUS Justice Thomas has said he would welcome a case involving the right to contraception.
Let’s remind legislators they have work to do to make this country safe for women again.
ACTION
Call or email your member of Congress and Senators and remind them to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act and the Protecting Access to Medication Abortion Act (H.R. 767/S. 4467) to make sure the medicine used in 53% of all abortions is available.
Or Use RESISTBOT to send this email. Just text SIGN POWAYU to 50409.
“I am your constituent and I am appalled to learn that in Alabama, frozen embryos are now declared children. Those embryos are used for in vitro fertilization to help people have the children they want. Destroying those embryos when no longer needed is a felony.
Wait, it gets worse. In 11 states we have fetal personhood. In those states women can be forced to undergo court ordered obstetric surgery to save a fetus over their life.
Women are not full citizens in almost half the country. I strongly urge you to repair the damage the Supreme Court has visited on half of us when they deleted the right to abortion care.
I want you to do everything possible to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act (H.R. 12/S. 701) restoring the right to an abortion nationwide and and the Protecting Access to Medication Abortion Act (H.R. 767/S. 4467) to make sure the medicine used in 53% of all abortions is available. For me this is a critical issue and I promise I will remember at the next election.”
RESOURCES
Healthcare Advocacy (Us)
Website
Our Newsletter resources including reproductive healthcare
Healthcare Advocacy Reading List
Find My Elected Officials
Contact the White House https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
Contact State and Federal Representatives
By phone: (202) 224-3121
By email: democracy.io
Important Healthcare Resources
League of Women Voters Healthcare Reform Toolkit
Organizations to Contact
National Nurses United Medicare4All
Physicians for a National Health Program
One Payer States
Healthcare Now
Reproductive Health
NARAL - Pro Choice America
Charley. chatbot abortion resource - make sure to use a secure incognito browser if you live in a state that has banned abortion
Planned Parenthood
Miscarriage and Abortion Hotline has references about where to procure abortion medications. They also assist women in the process of self managed abortion or miscarriage by phone or text and will respond in an hour. Details and hours of operation at their website.
United State of Women Reproductive health page (bottom of the page) has important resources such as medical support, access to Telehealth, prescriptions by mail, and legal support references.
Practice careful communications - The Digital Defense Fund has a number of tips to keep texts, calls, and internet use private. Here is their site.
If you need financial help with an abortion try abortionfunds.org
Claims Denials and Appeals & What to Do
Appeal a Healthcare Decision
Appeal/Negotiate a Hospital Bill
Disinformation Management
Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency
Save Democracy
Chop Wood, Carry Water by Jessica Cravens
RESISTBOT
Link to the RESISTBOT site to learn more
Link to Chop Wood, Carry Water RESISTBOT write up
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Ideologues are full of hubris over ideas, but they lack the leadership and problem-solving skills necessary to APPLY knowledge. And they lack logic. With this line of thought, women become reduced to vessels for male sperm—and all the violence THAT implies. No clarity has been offered re: care, [education, schooling and support!] of the so-called “embryonic people.” The parents wanting a healthy child who spent thousands in cash now become targets for a theocracy . . .and dreams of parenthood go right out the window. Or does Alabama plan on forcing women to carry pregnancies and give birth to these embryos? Alabama, a state so poor, it is a top ten recipient of federal revenues—they can’t even support the population they already have! And now, 50% of that population is being stripped of its rights over privacy and over their own bodies. Alabama extremism is well on the road toward violation of the Nuremberg Code of medical ethics: Lack of consent, coercion; a State experiment enforced by people lacking medical expertise (no, lawyers and elected officials are NOT medical experts, and threatening prison or worse IS coercive); invoking physical, mental suffering & injury—without acknowledging the inherent risks for death and injury.