As we ride out 2000 and suxteen, the reproductive assault hits just keep on coming. On Thursday, news broke that Ohio had just passed the most draconian abortion law to exist since the Supreme Court ruled on Roe Vs. Wade in 1973, essentially making it illegal for a woman to have an abortion by outlawing it once a fetal heartbeat is detected.
Today, we learn that a lawsuit has been filed in Louisana by Nick Loeb, the ex-partner of actress Sofia Vergara. Or, to be more precise, Loeb is filing the lawsuit on behalf of two frozen embryos he shares with Vergara. Using the names Emma and Isabella, the lawsuit "claims that they have a right to live, access to a trust fund and asks that they be raised by Mr Loeb."
This isn't the first time Loeb has tested legal precedent. For the past year, he and Vergara have been embroiled in a "custody" battle for the embryos. Loeb wants the right to implant them in a surrogate so that they might become fetuses which then potentially turn into babies for whom he will be the sole parent. Vergara wants nothing of the sort, which seems reasonable given Loeb's proposition involves her consenting to the creation of two humans who will then be raised by someone who sounds like a complete sociopath.
It seems less than coincidental that Loeb includes the provision of a trust fund provided by Vergara in this latest affront to hard won reproductive rights. (Vergara currently earns $1million per episode of the hit comedy, Modern Family.)
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But bitter relationship baggage aside, the lawsuit itself signals a hugely worrying direction for reproductive healthcare rights in a country whose hard right jurisdictions are already looking for every means possible to prevent women from governing their own bodies. "Emma" and "Isabella" currently have no personhood. Naming them as if they do is a little like naming and affording rights to a pimple just because it contains genetic human information. Are we to consider our monthly menstrual waste potential humans also deserving of legal rights?
This kind of saccharine, scientifically unsound way of discussing personhood would be hilarious if it weren't so terrifyingly real in the minds of people at liberty to deny choice to those of us with the potential to bring a fetus to term. It is not Nick Loeb who'll have to bear the physical trauma of carrying twins for nine months (and that's if implantation is even successful, which is not a given), and nor will the majority of lawmakers who take a firm stance against abortion ever have to experience pregnancy or childbirth. To them, the theoretical concept of "life" (which, I suspect, is all too often muddied by the egotistical value they place on their own genetics ie. how dare anyone be given the opportunity to decide my sperm isn't good enough for them) outweighs the actual life that exists in women forced to carry these fetuses.
There's a reason Loeb (sorry, those fictional little girls "Emma and Isabella") have filed this lawsuit in Louisiana. It's because eggs fertilised by IVF in that state are recognised as "juridical persons" until implantation occurs. Such a distinction might provide relief to couples undertaking the often difficult and emotionally wrenching process of IVF, but it wasn't designed so that women could be forced into having children with emotionally unstable ex-partners.
In fact, in cases where women have fought for access to a deceased partner's frozen sperm, they've had to legally prove their partner consented to having their sperm used prior to death. Vergara is not consenting, and that's the fundamental difference.
But there's the broader moral issue at stake too. Embryos do not and should not have legal personhood, which isn't to say they can't be privately envisioned as people by mutually consenting couples. Yes, they contain human genetic material but so do dead skin cells. So does the hair that society conditions women to remove from their bodies. For that matter, there is surely no greater source of potential human life than that contained in a single masturbatory emission from a humble penis. Will Nick Loeb and his like minded menfolk be giving names to the (literally billions) of children they discard every time they sneak a quick wristy? Who will speak for their lives?
It would be easy to dismiss this lawsuit as a ludicrous attempt to circumvent sense and test the legal waters, but recent times have shown we shouldn't be too complacent when things appear too ridiculous to come to fruition. Less than a few months ago, a Trump presidency still seemed like the realm of satire. But now we have to sit and watch as the man endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan vows to appoint hard right judges to the Supreme Court so that Roe Vs. Wade can finally be overturned. This is not a joke and nor is Loeb's latest legal venture.
The time for vigilance is now. If Loeb's lawsuit is successful, it won't only put Vergara into the untenable position of potentially having children she doesn't want (for even if she doesn't bear the pregnancies or raise them, the biological material is still half hers) it will also threaten the rights of women all around America.
But then, the personhood of actual, living women has never seemed to matter much when it comes to reproduction.
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