http://www.newsweek.com/alabamas-bizarre-ruling-isnt-really-about-embryos-opinion-1872618

Alabama’s Bizarre Ruling Isn’t Really About the Embryos | Opinion

Published Feb 22, 2024 at 3:02 PM ESTUpdated Feb 23, 2024 at 3:27 PM EST

labama’s Supreme Court ruling asserting that frozen embryos are “children” will have devastating and far-reaching implications. One of the largest hospitals in the state has already suspended in-vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments while its administrators weigh the legal risks of the decision—with potentially more clinics and hospitals to follow.

The immediate consequences are earth-shattering for people with infertility who rely on IVF to build their families. It also creates a domino effect that is likely to be felt far beyond Alabama’s state lines. Not only does it threaten the future of IVF, but it also further jeopardizes all aspects of reproductive health in a climate where every day anti-abortion proponents are passing dangerous legislation that robs people of their bodily autonomy and criminalizes abortion care.

As a leader of an organization that helped found the movement for Reproductive Justice—the right to have a child, the right not to have a child, and the right to raise our families in safe and sustainable communities—I know that this ruling not only threatens our fundamental freedoms but opens the floodgates for the broader policing of pregnancy. This goes beyond abortion, but it is all part of the same anti-abortion playbook to exert control over our bodies and our lives. How do we know this? “Fetal personhood,” which gives more rights to fertilized eggs than pregnant people, has always been the goal of the anti-abortion movement—one they will undoubtedly use to charge people with crimes for simply exerting their right to build their families on their own terms.

The motive of this ruling—and other attacks on reproductive health—is not to “protect” life or grow families, otherwise IVF wouldn’t be under threat. It is to punish, criminalize, and take away the rights of pregnant people and put an end to abortion care. This is part of a series of interconnected attacks on reproductive freedom that attempt to give governments and law enforcement total control over our bodies. It will increase targeting for investigation, arrest, and prosecution of people for their pregnancy outcomes—particularly Black and brown people, who are always the first targets for surveillance and criminalization.

We’ve already seen this in action with Alabama and other states using “fetal personhood” to put people behind bars because of their pregnancy outcomes, including the arrest of a Black woman in Ohio who was charged with felony abuse for miscarrying a nonviable fetus. A 2023 Pregnancy Justice report shows a rise in pregnancy criminalization nationwide over the past decade, with Black people being criminalized at higher rates.

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Black women already experience higher rates of infertility, pregnancy-related complications, maternal, and fetal death, and more barriers to care than almost every other racial group. What we need is full access to reproductive care, not punishment. Since the origins of chattel slavery, efforts to control our reproductive health have always been about power rooted in our oppression—and what we’re seeing here is no different. The same anti-choice leaders who want to take away our right to bodily autonomy and health care, are the same racist leaders who have been threatening our liberation for generations.