Embryos Are Kids? Judicial Tyranny and Justice in the Name of Jesus | Opinion

Margaret Atwood couldn't make this up.

The claimants in LePage v. Mobile Infirmary Clinic argued their "embryonic children" were victims of wrongful deaths after their accidental destruction. Last week, Alabama's highest court not only ruled in their favor but also expanded the definition of "children" to include cryopreserved, fertilized eggs. That's right:Despite containing as few as two cells, these pre-Alabamans will now unconsciously enjoy all the same rights, legal status, and privileges as actual Alabamans.

The majority opinion, penned by Justice Jay Mitchell, includes new, nightmarish terms like "cryogenic nursery" and "extrauterine children." He promptly declares that "all parties to these cases, like all members of this Court" agree that an unborn child's life begins at fertilization. "This," he claims, "is true, as everyone acknowledges."

Of course, Mitchell's uncontested fact is pure fiction.

There is no consensus about personhood among either biologists or theologians. Many scientists think personhood is a biologically baseless social construction. Others believe the emphasis on fertilization disregards what we know about gene plasticity and environmental factors as well as what we don't yet know about consciousness.

Religious teachings are an equally gray area: Jewish law allows for abortion, and most Jews believe personhood begins after birth. Some Christian denominations are explicitly pro-choice, while others remain ambivalent. And even when the official doctrine is clear, we know adherents aren't as united. For instance, one in four Americans who have had abortions are Catholic.

Indeed the only consensus is that the majority of Americans support abortion whether they are religious or not (and they are, by the by, increasingly not).

In the immediate aftermath of the LePage ruling, Alabama's largest hospital announced an indefinite pause of in-vitro fertilization treatments for fear of criminal prosecution. Meanwhile, almost half of Americans say they or someone they know has used fertility treatments—including IVF and other assisted reproductive technologies—to help start a family. In his lone but excoriating dissent, Justice Greg Cook brilliantly used his fellow justices' own words to argue the court was overstepping its judicial authority and had arrived at a fallacious conclusion by "plugging a string of words into a dictionary and running with the first result."

Of course, in post-truth America, none of this matters. The anti-abortion agenda has never been about democracy, family values, facts, or even faith. It's a manufactured, misogynistic mythos. And from the moment of its conception, it's been about consolidating political power; codifying a radical religious view into state and federal law; and compelling the rest of us to comply.

In case there was any doubt, Chief Justice Tom Parker sat down with QAnon conspiracy theorist and self-proclaimed Seven Mountain Mandate (7M) prophet Johnny Enlow in an interview released the same day as the LePage ruling. The judge outed himself as a fellow 7M acolyte, saying: "God created government... It's heartbreaking we have let it go into the possession of others... We've abandoned those Seven Mountains, and they've been occupied by the opposite side."

For the uninitiated, 7M is a Christian reconstructionist and apostolic reformation belief that Christians must impose their fundamentalist values by conquering every aspect of American society and ultimately establish a global theocracy. And this interview is far from the first time the chief justice has aligned himself with Christian nationalists. Last year, he joined them to pray for "a growing hunger in the judges of Alabama and around the nation for more of God... so that they can play their forecast role in revival in this nation."

Parker, who has called judges "gods with little g's," has frequently used the concurrence to legitimize his biblical legalism. What his latest opinion lacks in legal precedent, it makes up for in references to the Bible, biblical scholars, overtly Christian texts, and his own chief of staff, Reconstructionist John Eidsmoe. Citing Genesis, Jeremiah, and Exodus, Parker's sermonizes that "all human beings bear God's image from the moment of conception," that Alabamans had adopted "a theologically based view of the sanctity of life" which requires the government "to treat every human being in accordance with the fear of a holy God who made them," and that "human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God." Not one of Alabama's justices acknowledged the separation of religion and government or the First Amendment—but they did mention "God" 41 times.

Writing for The Hill this week, Max Burns wrote, "The casual reader could easily mistake Parker's diatribe for something published by Iran's ultra-conservative ayatollah." And just like Iran's leading theocrats, America's Christian nationalists have abandoned even the pretext of caring about democracy.

Insofar as it mobilizes Americans, there could be a silver lining to this week's decision—as we witnessed in Kansas and Ohio, when Americans have an opportunity to vote on these matters, they support access to reproductive services. Because there can no longer be any mistake about the political aspirations of Christian nationalists: They are conducting a holy crusade to corrupt our courts, dismantle our democracy, and install an authoritarian, theocratic government.

"To this, the Establishment Clause says no."

Melina Cohen is the Communications Director for American Atheists, a national nonprofit working to protect civil rights, advance political equality, achieve social inclusion, and empower atheists and other nonreligious people through advocacy, education, and community building.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.