Anticipatory obedience, a term we will all be familiar with by Jan. 20, describes how major figures and institutions appease an authoritarian before he takes power.
It’s hard to maintain a straight posture against threats and coercion, particularly if you think no one else will stand with you.
So they bow and scrape, hoping it will spare them pain or punishment. They pull punches. They accommodate. They hope to maintain what used to be normal life.
A recent episode of Dan Carlin’s “Hardcore History” podcast offered an appropriate metaphor for Alabama politics.
Carlin discussed Alexander the Great, the ancient Greeks and their methods of fighting. When those kingdoms and city states came to blows, they put on their armor, grabbed their shields, and formed tight units called phalanxes. Each man in the phalanx – which could run dozens of rows deep — carried a tall spear in his right hand and a shield in his left.
The Alabama Supreme Court handed down an unprecedented decision in February 2024, holding that stored frozen embryos created for in vitro fertilization, known as IVF, were “minor children” under a state wrongful death law.
The impact on the medical community was immediate and acute. Fearing newfound civil or criminal legal liability if embryos were now considered “persons” under Alabama law, IVF clinics had to make an overnight choice between providing patient care and risking that liability. As a result, multiple IVF clinics across the state immediately suspended IVF procedures. And the most direct impact, of course, was on patients.
One thing is clear from Marilyn Lands’ House District 10 victory: Abortion still motivates Democrats.
Lands turned a seven-point loss in 2022 into a 25-point romp on March 26. And for the first time since 2002 – when then-Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman almost pulled off a shocking re-election upset – Alabama Democrats came out of an election with more legislators than they had before it.
But the obvious question is whether Democrats can replicate Lands’ win around the state.
Shut your eyes.
Listen to the verbiage that has descended upon a citizenry whose forward, albeit gradual, movement toward mutual equality and parity was reversed — and annulled — by fear; insistence on racial hierarchy, and ignorance.
The day before the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos created and used for in vitro fertilization are children, my wife, Gabby, and I were greenlighted by our doctors to begin the IVF process. We live in Alabama.
That Friday evening, Feb. 16, 2024, unaware of the ruling, Gabby started taking her stimulation medications, worth roughly US$4,000 in total. We didn’t hear about the decision until Sunday morning, Feb. 18. By then, she had taken four injections – or two doses – of each of the stimulation medications.
The Alabama Legislature crammed 40% of this year’s session into February.
That’s light speed for the body. At this rate, lawmakers could finish the session in mid- to late April, over a month before the state Constitution would require them to depart.
You might approve. The less time the legislature sits, the less time they have to pass bad laws. In recent years, the Republican supermajority has turned legislative sessions into bonfires of civil rights and voting access. If it could stop our lawmakers from throwing other freedoms into the flames, I’d end the sacrificial ritual early.
When Alabama Chief Justice Tom Parker wrote a cheerleading concurrence in his colleagues’ decision to effectively end in vitro fertilization in the state, he cited Thomas Aquinas.
Aquinas, as I learned in Father Koterski’s philosophy class, was a Dominican theologian who spent most of his life trying to synthesize Catholic Church teachings with the philosophy of Aristotle. Koterski’s class focused on Aquinas’ thoughts about existence, in particular the idea of being as an act.
Birmingham resident Hannah Miles has been trying to have a baby for more than three years, fighting obstacles like endometriosis, diminished ovarian reserve, and cancer treatment that affected her husband’s sperm. The couple is already nearly $40,000 into the in vitro fertilization process after one failed transfer into her uterus in January. Their last embryo is scheduled to be transferred on March 19.
She messaged her IVF nurse through tears earlier this week, asking if she should continue the medication injections that cost $800 per vial out of pocket to keep her endometriosis from flaring up.
