WTF-- IVF is the same as murder?

[RainCaster]

Wait a damn minute. Couples who use IVF (In Vitro Fertilization) to conceive should be tried for murder according to Amy Phony Brrat.

In her twisted mind my wife and I are felons, and our two amazing adult children don't exist? When will the GOP give us a judicial candidate with a grip on reality?

For those who are wondering what this rant is about, on tonight's Rachel Madow Show she had a segment about Judge wannabe Barret and how she views fertility treatment the same as abortion. Yes, that's right. She thinks it's committing murder to use fertility treatments.

[SheltieLover]

1. K&R!

[vapor2]

2. Call every single republican with this fact

I read where calls do matter.

[BigmanPigman]

17. They do...I called 12 today, all GOP.

Only Mitch had his mailbox full. That is NOT good. Everyone, please call. No staffers are answering so leave a message. It doesn't matter if your phone has an area code not from any senator's specific state since people keep their cell phone numbers after they move out of state. The GOP plays dirty, fuck not being an actual constituent, this is important!!!!!

Call the Senate [phone]. Go to INDIVISIBLE!!!!!!!
https://www.democraticunderground.com/11044149
Call 12 GOP Senators in these states...NO SCOTUS, Save ACA!
Sullivan...Alaska [phone]
McSally...Arizona " " 2235
Gardner...Colorado " " 5941
Perdue...Georgia. " " 3521
Loeffler...Georgia " " 3643
McConnell...Kentucky " " 2541
Collins...Maine" " 2523
Daines...Montana. " " 2651
Graham...S. Carolina " " 5972
Tillis...N. Carolina " " 6342
Cornyn...Texas " " 2934

[calimary]

29. YES! Go to INDIVISIBLE!

https://indivisible.org

HIGHLY recommended!

[yellowdogintexas]

35. call their in state offices.

Easier to get through. Mitch has 6, one in each Cngressional district.

Cornyn and Cruz each have 5 and none of them are in the same city.

[BigmanPigman]

38. Actually, I prefer to leave a message since they tally all the calls,

no matter where they come from and whether or not it is an in person call or a message. I know a staffer for a Dem rep and she told me this. I can leave a fast message and get to the point and no one has time to ask for my personal info, even though I have a fake address all ready before I call (just in case to prove my constituency).

[vapor2]

54. EXCELLENT advice as they usually ask if you live in the senator's district

I had John Kennedy's staffers hang up on me twice so now I call after hours.

[BigmanPigman]

56. The best idea I got is from a person at a protest 3 or 4

years ago. I had been spending 15 min per congressman or senator to look up the phone number and address or a local post office to use. This person suggested I go to Zillow (the site that lists properties, houses, etc for sale in specific states or even more specific cities and towns). So now, as back up, I just Google "Zillow Timbuktu" for example. Up pops all kinds of residences where I can get an address and zip code in under two minutes for Mr Congresscritter's specific area. If a staffer asks if they want me to get a return call I say "No" but if they want my cell phone number I give it to them since I may have just moved and kept the number. If they want the address I give them the Zillow listing. It works every time!!! That was such a great idea.

Some people may argue that it isn't honest. I do not care. Are the GOP honest? Was ripping off another SCOTUS seat honest? This is a dangerous time and a little dishonesty is what may put us over the line and help us to finally win.

[vapor2]

55. EXCELLENT advice as they usually ask if you live in the senator's district

I had John Kennedy's staffers hang up on me twice so now I call after hours.

[c-rational]

51. Thanks for the phone numbers BP. I just called all from my cell and left a messge. Same as you,

I got through to alll bu Moscow Mitch.

[BigmanPigman]

61. Fantastic! Thank you so much!

[vapor2]

57. thanks for sharing!

I have never been able to get thru to Mcconnell's WA office, try his local offices. Can't block my number for Kevin Mccarthy or Gaetz. Imagine that.

[BigmanPigman]

62. I hope more and more people call.

It DOES make a difference.

[vapor2]

3. Call every single republican with this fact

I read where calls do matter.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

4. The Judge is wrong; IVF is not the same as murder.

She believes that IVF is the same since some fertilized embryos are disposed of--in her mind, they are murdered.

Too many eggs are harvested and fertilized and so what do you do with the excess? That's where the problem lies.

It's idiocy.

[KS Toronado]

14. I eat eggs every week and have never thought I was killing chickens by doing so.

Think I'll go to hell for murder?

[CaliforniaPeggy]

22. Nope! You're most likely eating unfertilized eggs.

There are fertilized eggs available, but those are collected very early after they were laid.

[GulfCoast66]

28. Most chicken eggs I eat are fertilized.

I buy from a lady who keeps some hens with a cock roaming around to protect against hawks. So she says. Although he is an intimidating bird!

They are good eggs. Same as my grandparents back who knows how many generations ate.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

32. I've eaten fertilized chicken eggs too, and they are good!

Haven't seen them in many years.

[ihas2stinkyfeet]

46. nah. if the hens dont sit on them they dont progress. and mostly they dont.

no hurry to put them in the fridge or anything like that.

[Phoenix61]

5. It's the unused fertilized embryos that are murdered.

Since life begins at conception those are actually people. All several 100 cells of them.

Her religious/personal beliefs won’t impact her rulings my ass. It’s her stated mission to use her position to spread the glory of god. Religious whack jobs annoy the hell out of me.

[gratuitous]

7. That's the philosophy

Which leads to a question I saw many years ago: Judge Barrett is touring an IVF facility with one of her daughters. They're in the room where a bunch of test tubes are housed, and there's a huge explosion in the facility. Warning sirens go off, emergency lights kick on, and Barrett is momentarily stunned. When she gets over the shock, her daughter is out cold on the floor. There's no time to lose! Does Barrett pick up her unconscious daughter and make a run for it, or does she grab one of the IVF containers, saving all those pre-children? That is, does she really regard those frozen embryos as so many actual people?

[Phoenix61]

24. I don't think she actually believes it at all.

It’s just a convenient, simplistic argument against abortion.

[joshcryer]

34. Roe v. Wade is conditioned on viability.

It makes an objective argument to placate the philosophical natalists. Human life, if it is viable, is therefore sacred. The IVF argument is philosophical, but until the technology exists, they won't be able to truly make the argument.

However, the technology (ectogenesis) does exist for lab animals and will exist for humans, and once it does, then abortion and IVF will be banned outright. You will still be able to get a zygote legally removed, but it would go from being an out patient procedure to a very expensive surgery and very expensive surgeons and life support stuff will be required. Thus making an "abortion" cost tens of thousands of dollars, along with likely forcing the "genetic-donor parents" to still care for the "sacred-zygote births" since there exists virtually no system of welfare for them.

Long term the arguments will be made for preserving the DNA of the zygotes and permitting the zygote to be destroyed but only if the DNA still exists, and then you'd have X amount of zygotes brought into existence.

Meanwhile we have decades of debate about what power women should have over themselves and their bodies, and there's not a whole lot we can do but to pack the fuck out of the courts. It's the only option at this point because this woman will be confirmed. And the lawsuits that they have triggered and ready to go will make their way up the ladder as she helps erode these rights.

[wnylib]

44. She is Roman Catholic so it's very likely

that she does believe it. I was married to a Catholic. They are taught to pray over miscarried fetuses and do an emergency baptism if the miscarriage happens at home in the early weeks. The Catholics who do use birth control - there are quite a few of them - will not use an IUD because an IUD prevents fertized eggs from implanting on the uterine wall. They will only use birth control pills or a physical barrier, e.g. a condom or diaphragm, although any type of birth control is forbidden by the church.

As a true believer, she would also not believe that it is wrong to lie or obfuscate about the influence of her beliefs on her future rulings because it would be "a good lie" for the greater good of getting on the court to save embryos and fetuses.

[Dorian Gray]

48. Oh geez

I'm a practicing Catholic and I miscarried at 12 weeks. We did NOT do an emergency baptism. That's not a thing. There are no requirements to do that thing. If people do it, they take it upon their own volition and call a priest on their own.

[wnylib]

49. I am not Catholic so I had not heard

of any of these things until I got married in a Catholic church. During pre Cana classes, the priest stated the Church's official position - no birth control except rhythm. A married couple who spoke to the group said they did not think rhythm was reliable. I still remember the quote because it was pretty blunt. The husband said, "When the pope rolls over in the middle of the night, he touches a pillow. When I roll over at night, my hand touches my wife's warm breast."

Then they both said that they would not tell anyone what to do except that, if they did opt for birth control, the wife should avoid using an IUD because it would result in the killing of embryos by preventing them from implanting in the womb.

I miscarried a few times, at 6 or 7 weeks, 10 weeks, and 12 weeks. My mother-in-law told me after the first one that I should have done a baptism. I said I thought that, in the Catholic Church, only priests could perform a sacrament. She said that the circumstances fit an emergency so I could have and should have done it "for the sake of the child's soul."

I'd never heard of such a thing and changed the subject.

[milestogo]

50. Its odd to think that God's grace towards any form of life is dependent upon a human ritual.

[wnylib]

53. You'd have to have known my

ex mother-in-law to understand her view. I think she believed herself to be more Catholic than the pope.

Since I am not Catholic, I don't know what the church's position was at that time (1970) regarding loss of a fetus or even an infant without baptism. Or what their position would be on that today.

My ex and I were married by a justice of the peace to avoid the religious issue with the families. (Mine is Protestant.) But his mother called almost daily to say we were "living in sin" for not being married by a priest. Finally, to make peace, we agreed to a ceremony in the chapel of a Catholic church. Had to get a dispensation for him to marry a non-Catholic, go to the pre marriage classes, and I had to change my witness. A Jewish friend and her Catholic boyfriend were our witnesses for the JP wedding. My witness had to be Christian, preferrably Catholic, for the church wedding, which took place 3 months after the JP one. His family refused to acknowledge the date of the JP wedding as our anniversary. They made a point of
ignoring it and inviting us out to celebrate on the anniversary date of the church ceremony.

Five years later we were divorced, in a civil court. Since that was forbidden, I'm sure they considered me a bigamist when I remarried a few years later.

[Dorian Gray]

60. I know plenty of people

who think similarly, but it's not official canon or anything. And I know way more who wouldn't consider anything of the sort. But the people who think they're more catholic than the pope are going to judge and force rituals that don't need to happen. It's sad to force something like that on a grieving mother and father if they weren't planning it and didn't have the emotional bandwidth.

[shrike3]

59. Same here. I have NEVER heard of any of this stuff.

[shrike3]

58. I'm a cradle Catholic and was not taught, nor have I ever heard of anyone being taught,to pray over

miscarried fetuses or do an emergency baptism if the miscarriage happens at home. I have never EVER heard of that. And I went to Catholic school. My mother miscarried, btw. Never mentioned emergency baptism. I'll have to ask her. You're right about IUDs.

I share everyone's concerns about ACB.

[wnylib]

63. As I said in another post, my former

mother-in-law tended to think she was more Catholic than the Pope. Since I am not Catholic, and was quite young at the time (20), I had no objective source for judging the things she said about her religion. Since she was a lifelong Catholic with a niece who was a nun, I figured she knew what she was talking about on most issues about her church.

But, to give you an idea of what she was like, she constantly scolded me for not converting because she said I was destroying her son's soul with my "paganism" (membership in a Protestant denomination). She also said that she donated to someone at her church for the IRA. Don't know if that was true or just talk. Her family had been in the US for 5 or 6 generations, so it's not like she had any close ties to anyone in Ireland.

She had completed high school and worked in an office for a couple years before marriage so I was astonished by her superstition on one issue. I overheard the MIL and other members of their family very quietly mention my ex's "fainting spells." I had not seen this until one day when we were in a hospital ICU waiting room where my sister was critically ill. He fell to the floor and had a grand mal seizure. Nurses attended him as he went into a series of them and an orderly rushed him to the ER. When he recovered, the ER doctor wanted him to go back later for tests and to try some meds to control it. He refused to go back.

I hoped his mother would convince him to see the doctor but she told me that doctors couldn't help him because the first "fainting spell" happened in church, after his confirmation. It happened a couple more times in church, so she believed the cause was a spiritual conflict over his soul, not a medical issue. She believed he would overcome it through faithful religious observance and prayers for his soul. I was dumbfounded. I'd expect that attitude from an evangelical fundamentalist sect or a 3rd world illiterate person, but not from a modern day Catholic in the US who had at least a high school education. A priest or doctor (preferably a Catholic one for her) could have told her it was epilepsy. But I wonder if she would have believed it even then.

[shrike3]

64. She sounds like a nut. My sympathies. Yikes. n/t

[underpants]

8. I thought we put those in the pods

and they are like extras in the matrix.

[Phoenix61]

25. Best answer yet. nt

[RainCaster]

11. She has no clue how science or medicine works

So. In her mind life begins at conception. I got that. It doesn't match up to the real world however.

Example:
A couple has 5 eggs harvested and fertilized. Two are implanted and only one of those takes hold and grows. There is no difference between the 1 non-viable egg inside her and the 3 non-viable eggs left in a lab dish. None of them are viable and do not grow.

This is where the far right dogma falls apart. Many pregnancies fail in the first few days of pregnancy and the woman never knows that she was pregnant. Should she be tried for murder? No, pregnancies fail, often for reasons we don't understand. Mostly they fail because something went wrong and the baby was not developing properly.

On a similar note, having watched a slow, painful & inhumane goodby to both of my parents and inlaws, I have a very different take on assisted suicide than Rome does.

[lapfog_1]

6. they also believe that many forms of contraception

should be illegal

[AZ8theist]

30. OH YOU BETTER damn well believe she will vote to overturn Griswold v Connecticut

Welcome to the United States of Gilead.

[Captain Zero]

39. Once Roe is overturned they will come after contraception

I have no doubt they will.

[Warpy]

9. This is how the fetus fetishists make themselves look the stupidest

No, guys, it's not a baby when sperm meets egg, nor when it divides and forms a blastocyst, sort of an organic soccer ball. It's not even a baby if it is successfully implanted inside a uterus and becomes a pregnancy. If you'll check those books you're always brandishing at the rest of us, you'll find out is doesn't become a baby until it exits the uterus and takes its first breath.

Anything else is patriarchal horse shit aimed at subjugating women and turning them into mindless breeding stock and natural slaves.

Only the religiously insane would call the desperate and painful attempt to conceive and carry a successful pregnancy "murder" because extra human tissue that is unthinking, unfeeling, and has only a remote possibility of ever becoming the end point of a pregnancy might someday be discarded when a family is complete.

I really have no sympathy at all for that viewpoint.

Congratulations on your two wonderful children. May ACB inhabit the hell she wishes on the rest of us.

[world wide wally]

10. Why hasn't anyone asked her about Trump's stem cell treatment for Covid-19?

[Celerity]

20. +1000

[keithbvadu2]

12. Ask her how many of these embryos are she and her church willing to adopt?

Ask her how many of these embryos are she and her church willing to adopt?

[AZ8theist]

31. Answer: ZERO. ABSOLUTE FUCKING ZERO.

The entire issue has NOTHING to do with defending the "unborn" and EVERYTHING about power, control and domination of women.
How fucked up in the head do you have to be, as a woman, to wish to be a slave to your husband, your church, and to your deity??

I will never understand it...........

[joshcryer]

36. You better believe that one.

But the cost to actually do it will be so prohibitive that no one will be able to get one anyway, especially those who really need it. I'm sure they'd be happy to raise some millionaires babies.

This is also, btw, why they are against medicare for all and such, because it means that the government would have to cover these procedures.

[58Sunliner]

13. She is fucked up. Not just a cult mentality, but sociopathic.

[sarcasmo]

15. Judge Barrett is a real life Serena Joy.

[Solly Mack]

18. Yep

And Aunt Lydia all rolled into one.

[BigmanPigman]

16. Maddow's show was the first time I heard of this too.

This moron is beyond psycho. She is as crazy as tRump, but in a different way.

[prowler67]

19. She is worse than tRump

He’s going to be voted out in 3 weeks
Hers is a lifetime appointment

He’s a con man who says what his base wants to hear
She is a true believer

[BigmanPigman]

23. True!

Call the Senate [phone]...I called 12 today and left messages. That is bad, mailboxes should be full. No one is calling.

[Ms. Toad]

21. Surely this is not the first time you've heard this.

If you and your wife create more than two embryos as part of IVF and those embryos were destroyed, in her world the destruction of those embyos was murder.

She is not saying your adult children don't exist - the "murder" was of the embryos you didn't implant, not the ones you bore and raised.

[Captain Zero]

40. So what will have to be done with the unused embryos to avoid murder charges?? ASK HER THAT.

In the hearings. Make her commit.

[Ms. Toad]

43. In their world view, they would be made available for adoption

(by implantation into the uterus of woman who wants a child).

[Upthevibe]

26. RainCaster....When I heard that I said the

same thing -WTF?!?!?! I called a friend to vent....OMB...

[Solly Mack]

27. She's warped like the rest of those who believe that crap.

[SunSeeker]

33. She's a zygote worshiper. Actual children? Not so much. nt

[orleans]

41. reminds me of this couple standing on the corner by the grocery store the other day

holding signs that said "abortion kills children"

and i thought: yeah, like you assholes care about children.

[DallasNE]

37. Does She See A Vasectomy As Murder Too

Same concept as harvesting eggs that get discarded. The sperm gets discarded too. Obviously, the morning after pill would be murder too because it sometimes purges a freshly fertilized egg.

But I thought her view was that life begins at fertilization, not that eggs and sperm are lives for the purpose of being a human life. Or is she talking only about the eggs are manually fertilized but not implanted, in which case she would be practicing medicine without a license. But that is the problem with all of these wacko views. Where do you draw the line in the middle of the swamp.

[Ms. Toad]

42. In their view, it is a human life at the moment of fertilization

So no, a vasectomy is not the same.

The issue is the fertilized eggs that are not implanted. Those are human lives - so discarding them is murder. Drawing a line based on religion for the beginning of life at a different place than medical science does is not practicing medicine without a license.

[GeorgeGist]

45. She's insane.

[Boomerproud]

47. Does that mean the Obama daughters shouldn't have been born?

Just asking...

[maxsolomon]

52. I'm surprised anyone is surprised by this.

Have you never heard of "Snowflake Babies"?

I have 2 cousins who both have IVF twins. Both are rabidly Anti-Choice Conservative Catholics; one of them would vote for Dems if not for that single issue (the other is a lost cause).

Either their extra embryos are frozen for Eternity, or they compromised their beliefs and disposed of them. Situational ethics, thy name is Conservatism.