On Demand, Jura nostra defended that butchered Latin for we dare defend our rights. That phrase also happens to be Alabama state motto and the cotton state appears to be busy defending the rights of human embryos that would be a sperm fertilized egg. According to eight of the nine justices on Alabama Supreme Court, frozen embryos created and stored for in vitro fertilization are children under state law. That’s an interesting ruling coming from a state that kept a variation of the one drop rule on its books until 2000. But facts aside, this ruling by Bamas High Court is not just problematic, but a painstaking violation of science, democracy and basic logic. Let’s get into the facts. An embryo is not a child. How do we know that?

Well, one is flash frozen like a premium cut of ahi tuna and the other is an inquisitive terrorist that talks back. You can’t put a living breathing human being in a freezer and expect them to be alive when you return. You can however, put an embryo and a Maytag drown it in Valvoline anti freeze type fluids and CPS will not bat an eye because an embryo is nothing more than a bunch of cells. They are not human beings. But that is not what Alabama’s High Court would have you believe Oh, no. Science be damned because there’s a higher authority apparently that’s operating down south. And his portion of the opinion Alabama Chief Justice Tom Parker wrote that human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God who views the destruction of his image as an affront to himself. Well, Justice Barker was aggressive with the pronouns there, and the nonsense and I get that Alabama wasn’t big on being part of the United States some 160 years ago. But the last time I checked, we were not supposed to be a blatant Christian theocracy. There was supposed to be this whole separation of church and state. So science should be the determinant factor here in the court decisions, not self serving deities envisioned by man and bolstered by folklore. As Americans we are entitled to a separation of church and state. Breaking away from King Henry’s church was the reason the Founding Fathers set up genocidal shop here to begin with. In fact, the First Amendment opens with Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise, being free from someone’s religious persecution and ideology is the purported foundational tenant of our nation yet Alabama gets to throw that all aside to make embryos human beings. And that’s not only hypocritical in terms of the whole US Constitution thing, but it’s also just logically foolish.

Does this mean child support starts at fertilization can Alabamans claim frozen embryos on their taxes? Does a pregnant woman in Birmingham carpool lane get a pass? Or maybe must a miscarriage at 10 weeks mandate a police report? Where does it end helped me out? Claiming embryos or children is as much great a foolishness as Kobe is great a beef it makes no sense. This ruling forces IVF clinics to shutter their doors, it forces prospective parents in Alabama to seek opportunity elsewhere. It also makes family planning for single woman and queer people far harder. Yet it’s what our nation seems to be allowing at least down in Alabama, and no shade to Bama, although I don’t think it should be talking about protecting human life when it ranks 45th overall and child well being 47 than education 45th and health care. And last year following the reversal of Roe v Wade didn’t eliminate all exceptions for abortion. Yeah. So now calling a cluster of cells stored in anti-freeze Children seems to be on the struggle bus just as the state has been for a long time. Labeling embryos as children isn’t the doing of a democracy. In fact, it’s the undoing of one.