Where’s Erica Kane When You Need Her?

I Don’t Want to Live in a Country Where an Embryo Has More Rights Than I Do.

In 1973, 10 year old me would go to a neighbor’s house after school to wait for my mother to get home. My neighbor was a chubby chainsmoker who was a big fan of the soap opera All My Children, so I began to watch it with her, pretty much from the beginning of the show in 1970. I watched that soap until it was cancelled in 2011, and Erika Kane Martin Brent Cudahy Chandler Roy Montgomery Marick Montgomery was a part of my life the whole time. She still is.

In 1973, I clearly remember Erika Kane getting on a train in Pine Valley to go to NYC to have an abortion. Roe vs Wade had just passed that same year and All My Children was on topic for the times. Even though I was only 10 years old, I knew exactly what was happening, and the weight of the decision that Erika Kane was making. I understood the importance of Roe vs Wade for women. It was about the right for a woman to make a private decision about what she does and does not do with her body.

In its 1973 decision Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court recognized that the right to liberty in the Constitution, which protects personal privacy, includes the right to decide whether to continue a pregnancy. For the first time, Roe placed reproductive decision-making alongside other fundamental rights, such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion, by conferring it the highest degree of constitutional protection…

Center for Reproductive Rights

Since Roe was overturned by our current sitting Supreme Court, that right to privacy is quickly being eroded. The latest and arguably most outrageous example of this is unfolding in Alabama. The Alabama Supreme Court has issued a ruling saying embryos created during an IVF procedure are considered people. A 5 day old embryo consists of about 100 cells, which seems too few to actually be a person, in my humble opinion.

At 5 days an embryo will be implanted into a woman’s uterus, which hopefully will attach to the uterine wall. But at 100 or so cells, that embryo is not able to stand up and march out of it’s petri dish, declaring itself a living and breathing person.

Those who have gone through IVF know that every embryo you implant may not burrow into the nurturing walls of the uterus, where it can grow and eventually become a viable human being. Many do not make it, to the utter heartbreak and devastation of the person/people trying to have a baby. Does this make them murderers, guilty of a wrongful death?

Well, if you interpret that Alabama law then the answer is yes. Those heartbroken and devastated women could be considered murderers because they failed to get pregnant with their implanted embryos.

Or, what if the law requires any and all embryos that develop must be implanted back into the woman? What if they all become fetuses? Anyone remember Octomom, who’s unscrupulous doctor implanted her with eight embryos, all of which grew. And she was lucky to carry them to term, as a woman’s uterus is not meant to carry that many babies. It’s dangerous for both the babies and the mother.

I realize I am not writing this with any solution in mind. I am having such a hard time wrapping my head around this ruling that I am hoping that writing about it will help me understand exactly where my country is headed. Each day brings another blow to civil rights and women’s rights and LGBTQ rights and every other right that the right-wing-christian-evangelical-racist-machine the republican party has become doesn’t agree with.

Our Supreme Court is a joke, with only 40% of Americans approving of it. The presumed nominee of the republican party for the 2024 presidential race currently has 91 criminal charges against him. And he tried to stage a coup against the government. And he’s a sexual predator. Not to mention the pathological lying.

John Pavlovitz wrote on The Beautiful Mess:

In the turbulent days in which we find ourselves, our most formidable adversary is not the one who is most intelligent, dishonest, or even immoral—it is the person who no longer has need of the truth; who ceases to be burdened by the existence or veracity of data in order to believe what they believe. 

How do we reach our fellow Americans who truly believe a man of such dishonor should lead this country again?

How the Fuck?

Yes I realize I kind of left this essay hanging with a swear word and no resolution, but my mind said enough. To quote Ozzy Osbourne “I’m going off the rails on a crazy train.”