Alabama: Embryos are People

This week, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos (like those used for fertility treatments) should be considered children. I’ll look at the Chief Justice’s religious interpretation (and why that’s incorrect) as well as the consequences for IVF.

 

The Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court wrote this: ‘Even before birth, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.’

Now, the judiciary interprets the law. So how can someone interpret a law religiously if that law isn’t religious? If a law doesn’t contain religion, its interpretation shouldn’t, either.

But the US Constitution is specifically an areligious, purely secular, document. It actively removes religion from the law-making (Congress), enforcing (President) and interpreting (judiciary) bodies of government. For anyone in any position of any level of government to make a decision based on religion directly opposes the Constitution. Hence it shouldn’t be done.

Let’s not forget that conservatives claim they interpret the Constitution as the Founders intended (originalism). They decry liberals for interpreting the Constitution to apply it to the modern world (a living document). Therefore, surely conservatives should be extra-enthusiastic about not putting God into a secular document?

 

If embryos should be considered children, they have full personhood.

Hence anyone who harms an embryo can be held liable for murdering a child under the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.  Considering the IVF process destroys most frozen embryos, the state’s largest hospital isn’t doing IVF treatments in order to protect its staff from possible prosecution.

(Yet they’re still going to harvest eggs. But why bother if they can’t fertilise and thus use them? I would say this is a waste of money, but considering how expensive American healthcare is, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ll continue to harvest the essentially useless eggs solely to make a profit.)

 

Not every IVF embryo can be used, meaning these ones are destroyed.

So a law prohibiting this essentially prohibits IVF. Unless the hospitals/centres fertilise one person’s batch of eggs and use this up on all their patients before fertilising new eggs.

This would mean people’s IVF babies would most likely not be their own genetic material. If people didn’t mind having non-genetically related offspring, there would be far more adoption.

 

Finally, it appears odd. Usually conservative groups want to increase the number of babies born, yet they’re attacking IVF, a baby-making institution. The reason why this is happening is a conservative reason (all unborn people have rights). Hence ‘appears odd’.

 

So, a religious interpretation of a law goes against the Constitution itself and it causes much uncertainty to the IVF sector. What an unnecessary mess.

Critique: The Testament (Margaret Atwood)

This story is the sequel to ‘Handmaid’s Tale’. It follows, in third person (a departure from the first person perspective in the previous book), the stories of three women. One is Aunt Lydia. Another is Daisy, a Canadian teenager. The last is Agnes, a girl growing up in the restrictive Gilead.

 

*****SPOILERS*****

 

Good Parts

 

There was plenty to appreciate in this book.

Regarding her statue, Aunt Lydia notes that ‘moss has sprouted in my damper crevices.’ That line has me cackling every time.

One of my favourite lines was ‘Wedlock: it had a dull metallic sound, like an iron door clicking shut.’

Wives make offerings to Lydia’s statue for fertility and chant praise ‘as if Latin could have more effect than English.’ This is funny, considering Latin seems to be the go-to for magical and religious importance. This aside, there is a reason for this attitude. For centuries, Latin was the official language across Europe, of the ruling class and of professional endeavours. Hence Latin was perceived to be more important than local language.

Agnes rewards a young Guardian for doing as he’s told by showing her ankle!

The political intrigues of the Aunts is fascinated and convoluted and I love it.

‘[B]ut terror does not exactly reign. Instead it paralyzes. Hence the unnatural quiet.’

Judd says it is in Lydia’s hands who notes, ‘how easily a hand becomes a fist.’

 

 

Women in Gilead

 

Gilead’s views about women are appalling. It’s even institutionalised, being taught to the girls from a young age so they’re less likely to challenge it. Commander Judd says it’s cruel to promise women equality. The fact that men go around thinking their mothers, sisters and daughters are lesser than they are astounds me.

            Girls are told they aren’t clever or important enough to be involved with men’s work. Swings are banned because people could look up their skirts. They aren’t even allowed best friends because this leads to disharmony! Lydia convinces the Commanders that women need to be women because men have better things to concern themselves with. It horrible.

The girls are told to cover their arms, hair and legs because otherwise men lose control and ravage them. It’s putting the blame for rape and sexual assault on the victims rather than the abusers.

Aunts, unlike most women, are allowed to write and read because they aren’t married. Yet in the previous book, nuns were sinful for not getting married and reproducing. Every belief system has contradictions but Gilead doesn’t even try to hide it.

The Aunts keep records of official parentage and true parentage. The official parentage is of the Commander and his Wife of the pregnant Handmaid. The true parentage names the biological parents, being the Handmaid and whoever impregnated her (a driver, a doctor, whomever it really is), to prevent incest. So for Gilead’s systems and beliefs to hold, it still relies on attitudes of the past, the very attitudes that Gilead denies and wanted to overthrow.

 

 

Questions

 

Plenty wasn’t wrong per se but it was definitely… off. It makes the reader question why the editors didn’t remove it and why it’s even in the book in the first place.

It says the girls wear braids but something in the back of my mind says that braids weren’t allowed?

The girls aren’t allowed best friends because it leads to whispers (yes), plotting (possibly), traitors (an escalation) and adulteresses (what?) The last listed item is such  a bizarre conclusion that doesn’t follow the rest. It’s so out of place that it can’t even be claimed as tenuous.

Agnes’ dad, having three Marthas, makes him more important than Shunammite’s because her has one. Yet Commander Fred had only two Marthas and Ofglen said that Fred was at the very top of the Commanders. This seems incongruous but it’s not unreasonable that Ofglen didn’t have completely accurate information.

In this book, it says that croissant are breakfast sandwiches. Um, what?

The Aunt’s motto is really quite bizarre: ‘Through childbirth labour with the female reproductive cycle.’

Daisy wonders why Lydia hadn’t had her mole removed. Woah. Why would you remove a mole. That’s such a bizarre concept. Unless, of course, it’s cancerous, but Daisy’s attitude towards Lydia’s health clearly isn’t the cause of her thought.

 

 

Problems

 

Other things were plain wrong.

Aunt Lydia has dirt on all the Commanders. They know this. Yet none of them think to kill her? Gilead isn’t shy of executing anyone so their reluctance over Lydia seems odd.

When Daisy and Agnes escape Gilead, a guy asks what took them so long then immediately says the bus is always late. If this was him correcting himself, this contradiction would be fine. But there’s nothing in the text that suggests he did this.

Later, when the pair wash up on a beach, they’re greeted by Ada. The beach landing wasn’t a part of the plan so how did Ada know where they were?

 

‘I could get irritated by her singing, I’m sorry about that now.’

Both halves of these sentences are main clauses. Inappropriately, they’re only separated by a comma: a conjunction, colon or semi-colon are the only ways to properly connect two main clauses in the same sentence.

The same mistake is made in an otherwise beautiful sentence: ‘The world was no longer solid and dependable, it was porous and deceptive.'

 

In Canada, the teacher’s annoyed with Daisy because she says baby Nicole (who was smuggled into Canada years ago) is being used as a political football between Canada and Gilead. The teacher tells Daisy this doesn’t respect people’s rights and feelings and, incredulously, that Daisy needs to grow up. Um, no: recognising a bargaining chip in international politics is an adult realisation.

 

Pearl Girls are missionaries sent abroad to bring back converts. They a liken sex rings with free love (because that makes sense).

They also seem to bring back loads of converts to be initiated at the same time? Either they coordinate when to bring them back or they have so many converts all the time.

The latter’s scary because it means so many people are falling for something disgusting. The former seems risky: I’d want to bring converts to Gilead as soon as possible so they didn’t have time to change their mind.

Bristol Zoo Project

Despite it being a chilly, rainy day, we were still able to fully enjoy the Bristol Zoo Project (2^nd February 2024). It was very wheelchair-accessible which was good considering I can’t walk far at all. We saw giraffes, geladas, lemurs, birds, cheetah, pygmy goats and wolverines.

 

The giraffes were my highlight.

One had very thin cream channels between its large dark patches of sharply cornered and well-defined shapes: I correctly identified that as a reticulated giraffe. The other two giraffes, whilst being of this same variety, had different colours, bigger channels, and smaller patches of indistinct blobs. Due to this, I incorrectly identified them as Rothschild’s giraffes.

To demonstrate the giraffe’s camouflage, the person giving the talk held out a photo to different groups of people to see if they could find it within the count of five. She came specifically to my level in the wheelchair which was really thoughtful. I found the giraffe quicker than everyone else. I mean, it wasn’t a competition, but if it were…

During the talk, there was another member of staff. At one point, they both put on a giraffe hand puppet and dramatically acted out ‘necking’, where male giraffes hit each other with their heads for play or mating rights. That was unexpected entertainment. They mentioned that, because males necked, the top of their ossicones go bald whereas female giraffes have hair.

They were a trio of boys. I’d never noticed how unique their scent was before. (Thankfully there was no hint of faeces). I got quite emotional and only just managed not to cry.

 

Geladas. Wow.

When I saw the silhouette of a gelada on the zoo’s map, I was utterly stunned. I had no idea there were any geladas in captivity! Considering they live in the largely-inaccessible Ethiopian Highlands, and the fact most people don’t know they exist, I never thought I’d ever see one in real life.

The walls of the indoor enclosures were stunning. They’d been painted in the beautiful traditional Ethiopian style. All other animal’s indoor enclosures had bare walls so to see these blares of colours took me by surprise. (The fact it was a gloomy rainy day, the bright colours were even more impactful.)

When we first got to the geladas, it was under a canopy. The only gelada fully visible was on a climbing frame with its back to us. It would shuffle around to face us but before you could take a photo it swivelled its back to us! So shy. Luckily when we went around the corner and saw the rest of the enclosure, there were many more visible geladas.

 

Most of the lemurs stayed indoors.

            The blue-eyed lemurs were beautiful. The male was completely black whereas the female was a rich brown. They quacked like ducks. That was so unexpected that I couldn’t stop laughing for a good while.

Just one ring-tailed lemur was outside, even if it was sat as close to indoors as possible. Its eyes were so much more vivid orange in real life than they are on documentaries, almost like they had two mini-satsumas sitting in their skulls. Naturally I wanted to take a photo of this, but considering the quality of my phone compared with state-of-the-art filming equipment, I couldn’t capture the vividness.

 

There was so much going on.

The birds were so noisy. Their squeaking was adorable but with tens of birds doing it constantly, it was rather obnoxious.

            The cheetahs were great. Even when they were pacing slowly, they were too fast for me to take a photo! They had tiny, tiny dots on their coat as opposed to spots. They were northeastern cheetahs, if I remember correctly. In zoos and documentaries, it’s usually cheetahs from the Serengeti or southern Africa that we see. Getting to see another subspecies, especially in real life, of cheetah was a great experience.

            Near the end of our trip, we saw pygmy goats. I’ve seen pygmy goats that were much smaller and I know they were adults because they had even smaller goats suckling on their udders. Although, there are many varieties of ‘normal-sized’ goats so there’s no reason why there can’t be many varieties of pygmy goats. Nevertheless, I love goats.

 

The woodland walk on a raised walkway among the trees was fantastic. It gave the impression that the predators were in the wild and we were seeing them in their natural habitat. It gave facts about woodland cover in the UK over time and when each of these animals went extinct on Great Britain.

The wolves and lynxes weren’t visible. The bears weren’t out in their enclosure because it’s winter so they were hibernating (obviously); there was, however, a bear cam so we could see them cuddled up together. The others had no inside enclosures that the public could see into. Whilst this was disappointing from a guest point of view, it fit the impression of being in the wild.

We did, however, see the wolverines. I thought they were solitary yet there was a group of at least three, though perhaps that was a mother with her children. They were my first in-person wolverine sighting! Wolverines exclusively live in cold habitats so this chilly English day would have been no problem for them.

There were buttons along the woodland walk that made sounds. One was the sound of a snail munching on food; much to my disappointment, this was the only button not working. Now I’m very curious to know what that sounds like!

At the lowest point of the walk was an open space with facts about insects. There were also thousands of insects flying in the air so the facts were well-placed. Being the closest place to the forest floor, it was no wonder it had the most insects. So this was great: the visitors could enjoy the forest walk without getting constantly annoyed by insects the whole way.

 

The Bristol Zoo Project was a thoroughly enjoyable day. There was a great variety of animals. They were of healthy weights and lived in good-sized enclosures. The staff were so helpful, opening gates and doors for us and being cheerful whenever speaking. They were enthusiastic despite the rainy day. For me as someone who’s largely housebound, this was a truly special day at a truly special place.