Alabama’s Republican-led legislature voted this week to protect the in vitro fertilization industry after the state’s Supreme Court ruled that a frozen embryo should be considered a child.
In general, Republicans, who have been receiving electoral blowback for the overturning of the Roe decision on abortion by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022, began scrambling to distance themselves from the Alabama ruling. Even presumptive party presidential nominee Donald J. Trump, who appointed the three U.S. Supreme Court justices who helped overturn the Roe decision, said he supports IVF for people looking to have children.
Still, at least some in the so-called “pro-life” movement are grappling with the IVF issue. In his concurring opinion in the Alabama ruling, Chief Justice Tom Parker wrote, “We believe that each human being, from the moment of conception, is made in the image of God, created by Him to reflect His likeness.”
If abortion and birth control continue to generate controversy nowadays, it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise.
The issues have roiled society for many generations.

As my upcoming book, “Still Trending: A Divided America from Newspaper to Newsfeed (due out Aug. 6),” points out, people on all sides of the contentious issues weighed in over the years in newspapers.
Just two examples:
The St. Louis Star published a letter from “Anti-Birth Control” on Sept. 11, 1922, that said:
“Editor The St. Louis Star: Birth control is the very foundation of evil, a sin against home, God and country.
It is a mystery howany God-fearing, home-loving people can say the ‘Our Father,’ and the phrase, ‘Thy will be done,’ and then hypocritically commit the
greatest sin against flesh and blood — murder.
Murder it is when God creates and man takes away the life that is born into the
world. God is life, yet the politicians would legalize murder."
S.R. Stewart, of Clay Center, Kansas, had a letter that ran in the Oklahoma Leader, on Sept. 4, 1925, that said, in part:
“Editor, Leader: Men being concerned, birth control is not a ‘feminist fad.’
That women would not bear children is proven false by statistics where scientific contraceptic knowledge is available. Holland’s birth rate dropped one-fourth; baby death rate dropped one-half; increased ratio of population became one-seventh greater. New Zealand did better, having the lowest baby death rate in the world — 50 per 1,000; Holland’s the lowest in Europe, 90 per 1,000, against 180 formerly.
… You who call abortion murder, don’t lay the blame on the mothers, but on those misguided humans who oppose birth control and who are responsible for laws keeping such knowledge from mothers. Church teachings, enslaving the minds of men and more especially of women, are largely responsible for such laws and for present birth and baby death rates.”
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