If Alabama judges say IVF embryos are human, then male masturbation must be murder | Opinion

The Alabama Supreme Court has long held that unborn children are “children” for Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. This statute allows the parents of a deceased child to recover financial compensation for their child’s death.

This Court also recently ruled that embryos kept in a cryogenic lab are “extrauterine children” and that their “death” constituted a trespass of the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. The Alabama high court overturned a lower court’s decision to award the plaintiffs compensatory damages.

Opinion

Since this Court was witless enough to establish case law that hours-old embryonic cells constitute equal and full human life, then their judgment, indeed, raises serious questions about the ethical status of all components of the procreative process.

Therefore, this creates the naturally conclusive proposition that the willful disposal of any specific part of the essential essence to life — in this case, sperm — should also constitute the wrongful death of an extrauterine child.

Any man who is incapable of withholding the necessary ingredients of life from deliberate discard and wanton ejaculation commits the crime of Wrongful Death of an Extrauterine Minor under the Court’s prior ruling in LePage v. The Center for Reproductive Medicine.

Therefore, any such disposal into an unapproved receptacle not intended for procreation — such as but not limited to: a sock; a towel; a plumbing fixture; or a prehensile, multi-fingered appendage — ought to be considered criminal action, and such action to be penalized accordingly by the state.

(Perhaps the electric chair?)

As the Court so compellingly phrased it: “God made every person in His image (and) 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 … and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.”

(I’m not making that up by the way, that’s actually a direct quote from the ruling by the Alabama State Supreme Court justices, who all swore to uphold the famously church-separated Constitution of the United States.)

So then, the Court must also appreciate that the extrauterine ejaculation of spermatozoa is a calculated effacement of God’s glory, and therefore is equivalent to illegal misconduct in the State of Alabama.

But lest the Court seek to replicate this argument in misguided retribution to the binary, opposite sex – i.e. women — let them be reminded there is scientific and factual evidence that the expulsion of the female half of the undertaking occurs both involuntarily and (roughly) monthly — unlike the situation on, or perhaps in, the other hand.

(They should also remember that there are roughly 7,000 female lawyers in Alabama, at least some of whom would be happy to try this case.)

Therefore, it is established that the menstrual elimination of an egg is involuntary and therefore lawful, while the disgorgement of seminal fluid is rarely anything but… though occasionally on it.

To conclude, the judge’s convenient omission of the fact that such cells are only capable of low-temperature storage because of their embryonic, pre-life state, then this Court has created the nescient precedent that all pre-life materials constitute human life, and their willful disposal is a crime in the State of Alabama.

In summary: This is clearly satire, and no — masturbation shouldn’t be a crime. But thanks to Alabama, this legal logic is sound, and it’s what happens when a shame-based religion like evangelical Christianity gets its claws into our governmental systems. (Which is exactly why the First Amendment establishes a separation of church and state.)

This laughably awful case law is already affecting women and families in Alabama and could have real implications for women and families across the nation. Yet it remains a dense, nuanced legal decision that most people don’t (and won’t) understand beyond basic facts.

At best, this case will come back to haunt Republicans in the fall election and beyond, but in the meantime, for any American who has ever experienced the IVF process or loved someone who has — and 42% of U.S. adults say they or someone they know has used fertility treatments — then this is no laughing matter.