Alabama Supreme Court. Photo by Jeffrey Reed / Creative Commons
By Michael Meeropol | The Rag Blog | April 22, 2024
The following is an expanded version of a commentary delivered by Michael Meeropol, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Western New England University, over WAMC-FM on March 1, 2024. It has been adapted for The Rag Blog by the author.
Michael Meeropol will be Thorne Dreyer’s guest on Rag Radio at 2 p.m. Friday, April 26, 2024, on KPFT 91.7-FM in Austin and streamed at KPFT.org.
By now it is hard to be outraged by the actions of Trump and his minions. However, the decision by the Alabama Supreme Court which in effect shut down In Vitro Fertilization availability in that state was so shamelessly supportive of extreme right-wing Christian interpretations of the word of God it took my breath away.
But there is a silver lining. That ruling has set off shock waves in the so-called Right to Life Movement because the MAGA extremist Chief Justice, Tom Parker, made explicit the “Christian Nationalist” ideas behind that decision:
Parker wrote:
Human 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. [Alabama’s Sanctity of Life statute] recognizes that this is true of unborn human life no less than it is of all other human life–that even before birth, all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.[i]