Leaving Alabama’s IVF programs open to attack

  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.

Fetal personhood rulings could nullify a pregnant patient’s wishes for end-of-life care

  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.

Voices of regression

  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.

I’m a political scientist, and the Alabama Supreme Court’s IVF ruling turned me into a reproductive-rights refugee

  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 great Goat Hill stampede of 2024

  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.

The Alabama Legislature helped Tom Parker realize his medieval dreams

  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.

IVF patient vows to fight for access to treatment in Alabama following court ruling

  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.

Toforest Johnson shows who Alabama’s death penalty serves

  Toforest Johnson should not be on death row.

  I’m not the first person to think that. I doubt I’ll be the last.

  A jury convicted Johnson in 1998 of the murder of William Hardy, an off-duty Jefferson County sheriff’s deputy shot and killed in a parking lot on the morning of July 19, 1995. Police arrested Johnson a few hours later.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse - Mike Hubbard conviction finally upheld

  Over the past four years during my travels and speaking events over the state, the most asked question posed to me has been, “Why in the world is Mike Hubbard not in jail?”

  It was four years ago in June 2016 that the Speaker of the Alabama House of Representatives, Mike Hubbard, was convicted by a jury of his peers in Lee County of a dozen counts of violating the state's ethics Laws.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Alabama Supreme Court races on the ballot this year

  Among the plethora of races on the ballot this year are the important seats on the Alabama Supreme Court. We have an unprecedented five out of nine seats up for election.

  Our Alabama Supreme Court as well as our Court of Criminal Appeals are extremely conservative, pro-business, and all Republican.

  This conservatism dates back to the 1980s and 1990s. During that two-decade run, the plaintiff lawyers controlled and dominated our Supreme Court. We were known throughout the country as a plaintiff’s paradise. It was like a fairytale jackpot justice system. It was not uncommon for ludicrous multimillion-dollar verdicts to be upheld daily for all types of cases. We were called "Tort Hell" by Time Magazine.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: The countdown to new legislative districts

  The much-anticipated 2018 election contests have been pushed back by about three months due to the unanticipated race for Jeff Sessions’ Senate seat. This ongoing contest will dominate the news through late September.

  It was previously thought that June 6th would be the opening bell since fundraising for next year’s June 5 primary could begin at that time. However, the bell will probably start chiming in full force by Labor Day.

Billy Corriher: Elected judges rule against LGBT rights more often than appointed judges

  On September 30, Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore was removed from office—for a second time—for defying federal court orders. The Alabama Court of the Judiciary suspended Moore until the end of his term for violating judicial ethics when he instructed lower court judges to ignore a federal court order to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. In January 2016—more than six months after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in support of marriage equality—Moore ordered Alabama judges “not to issue any marriage licenses” that violate the state’s ban on marriage for same-sex couples. As federal judges handed down marriage equality rulings in recent years, Moore was the only elected judge who ordered lower court judges to defy the Constitution, though several other elected justices either delayed or suggested defiance in marriage equality cases.

25 years of of Roy Moore's unconstitutional efforts to mix law and religion

  Since his appointment as a state circuit judge in 1992, Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore has put his personal religious views above the law and the U.S. Constitution, frequently bringing religion into the courtroom and basing judicial opinions on his Biblical beliefs. He has been removed from office once for disobeying the federal judiciary on the matter, and now he again faces a trial for violating judicial ethics for refusing to recognize federal court rulings on same-sex marriage. Here is a timeline of events leading up to the September 28 trial in the Alabama Court of the Judiciary.

Federal judge: Alabama must recognize marriage equality ruling

  A federal judge ruled this week that Alabama officials must abide by the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing same-sex marriage despite contrary statements by the Alabama Supreme Court– a victory for the Southern Poverty Law Center and other civil rights groups that fought to secure marriage equality in the state.

  The permanent injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Callie V. Granade, which applies to the attorney general and all probate judges in Alabama, mandates that state officials issue same-sex marriage licenses and recognize such marriages in accordance with the high court’s ruling last year. The district court’s ruling comes after the Alabama Supreme Court refused to withdraw an order earlier this year that said the state was not bound by a federal court decision that struck down the state’s same-sex marriage ban months before the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic ruling in June 2015.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Remembering Chief Justice Perry Hooper, Sr.

  A few weeks ago former Alabama Chief Justice Perry O. Hooper Sr. died at his home in Montgomery at age 91. He was the epitome of the southern gentleman. He was also one of the founding fathers of the modern Republican Party in Alabama.

  Hooper Sr. was a GOP leader long before it was cool to be a Republican in Alabama. He was the state’s longtime National Committee Chairman as well as a one-time party chairman. Many of Hooper’s early GOP stalwarts, like Wynton Blount and Jim Martin, used to jest that there were so few Republicans in the state that they could call a state executive committee meeting or convention in a phone booth.

Richard Cohen: Roy Moore has 'disgraced his office' and should be removed

  Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore has disgraced his office for far too long. He’s such a religious zealot, such an egomaniac, that he thinks he doesn’t have to follow federal court rulings he disagrees with. For the good of the state, he should be kicked out of office.

  In 2003, Moore was removed from office for violating a federal court order. What he's done this time—tell the state's 68 probate judges to violate a federal court order—is far worse.

  As the Southern Poverty Law Center's ethics complaints lay out clearly, Moore has violated his oath of office and the Alabama Canons of Judicial Ethics multiple times.

Craig Ford: The case for impeachment

  The House is supposed to vote this week on setting up a committee to investigate the charges for impeaching the governor. Impeachment is serious business, and I wanted to lay out the reasons why many of us in the Alabama Legislature are calling for the governor's impeachment:

  I’m not a lawyer, but I believe it’s important for those of us calling for the governor’s impeachment to make our case to the public and the legislature.

Hank Sanders: Senate Sketches #1505: Right and wrong vs. Senate customs

  What do we do when we are caught between institutional customs and right and wrong? I am facing such a dilemma at this very moment. The institutional customs of the Alabama Senate says that one senator does not get involved in another senator’s local legislation except to vote yes or no. On its face, that is as clear as black and white.

  The issue is electronic bingo, which the Alabama Supreme Court has repeatedly struck down. If a bingo bill affects only one particular county, it is clear where customs stop and a question of right or wrong begins. When that is the case, there is no question to ask and no answer to make. That is as clear as black and white.

SPLC expands ethics complaint against Chief Justice Roy Moore

  Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore should be removed from the bench for advising state probate judges to enforce Alabama’s same-sex marriage ban, the Southern Poverty Law Center said in a new supplement filed yesterday in its ongoing ethics complaint against Moore.

  “Chief Justice Roy Moore is once again demonstrating that he is unfit to hold office,” SPLC President Richard Cohen said. “Despite the fact that Alabama probate judges are under a federal court order that bars them from discriminating against same-sex couples seeking marriage licenses, Justice Moore has irresponsibly advised them to do the opposite. You would think after being removed from the bench once before that the chief justice would know better.”

Additional ethics complaint filed against Alabama chief justice for defying federal judiciary

  Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore continues to “flout and violate” the state’s code of judicial ethics following a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that legalized same-sex marriage across the country, according to a new supplement filed this week in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s ongoing ethics complaint against Moore.

  “Justice Moore has been removed from office for unethical actions once before, but it’s clear that he hasn’t learned his lesson,” said SPLC President Richard Cohen. “It’s obviously unethical for him to urge defiance of a United States Supreme Court ruling. He needs to understand that he is a judge, not a preacher.”