It has been very informative to watch the reaction of religious conservatives to the collision between the principle that every fertilized zygote contains a human soul and the reality that in vitro fertilization produces a large number of embryos superfluous to the parents’ needs. As everyone knows, Alabama’s Supreme Court has held that stored embryos are children for purposes of the state’s wrongful death statute. Providers of IVF in Alabama and elsewhere were thrown into consternation and would-be parents frustrated. The political backlash was swift and powerful. On March 6, Alabama’s governor signed legislation that would hold parents and IVF providers harmless against civil or criminal liability for the death of stored embryos produced by IVF. Manufacturers of goods used in the IVF process are exempted from criminal liability, and civil liability is capped at the price paid for the IVF service.
Politicians around the country who have sponsored and supported fetal personhood legislation are now nervously proclaiming their support for IVF because it allows couples who otherwise couldn’t have their own children to do so. It turns out that the logically consistent application of religious dogma runs up against an even more powerful principle among American religious nationalists. To them, motherhood is a paramount virtue, both because women should want to bear and rear children and because America needs more babies, or at least more of the right people’s babies.
