This week's featured article is "The Fragile Generation" by Lenore Skenazy and Jonathan Haidt, originally published in the December 2017 print issue.
This audio was generated using AI trained on the voice of Katherine Mangu-Ward.
Music credits: "Deep in Thought" by CTRL and "Sunsettling" by Man with Roses
The post <I>The Best of Reason</I>: The Fragile Generation appeared first on Reason.com.
North Carolina is one of the few states to keep detailed statistics on homeschoolers—who are famously resistant to scrutiny, and for good reason—and officials in the state recorded an interesting development this year. After dipping from a pandemic-era high when public schools were closed or generally making a poor job of remote learning, the ranks of homeschoolers have again begun to rise. With census figures showing similar growth elsewhere, we have further evidence that DIY education is here to stay.
In the Statistical Summary for Homeschools 2023–2024, compiled by the state's Department of Administration, the number of registered K–12 homeschools in North Carolina stands at 96,529. Each school can serve more than one student, and the estimated number of homeschooled K–12 students is 157,642. That's down from the peak of 112,614 registered homeschools serving an estimated 179,900 students during the chaos of 2020–2021, but up from 94,154 registered homeschools and 152,717 students last year. Before the pandemic, in 2019–2020, 94,863 homeschools served 149,173 students.
For K–12 private schools, enrollment is up from 126,678 in 2022–2023 to 131,230 in 2023–2024. In 2019–2020, before the pandemic, North Carolina private schools had 103,959 students enrolled.
By contrast, traditional public school enrollment is declining.
"Traditional public schools have 1,358,003 students in 2023-24, losing 0.4% of students from last year to this year and down 3.6% overall from before COVID-19," according to Chantal Brown of EducationNC, which covers education issues in the state. "Charter schools have 139,985 students in 209 schools in 2023-24, gaining 4.9% over last year."
North Carolina isn't alone. In May, Carly Flandro of Idaho Education News found, based on Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey data, "about 6% of Idaho students were home-schooled, on average, during the past two school years. And the state data that is available shows increases since the height of the pandemic. At the same time, public school enrollment dipped this year for the first time since the 2020-21 school year."
Newsweek's Suzanne Blake added that Texas also saw a rise in homeschooling in a continuation of a trend that began "even before the pandemic."
In fact, the Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey, which takes a continuing series of snapshots of data over the course of each year, shows a national increase among the ranks of homeschooled students from roughly 3.6 million in 2022–2023 to about 4 million this past year (there's variation depending on the snapshot you examine, so it's best to look for averages). Meanwhile, public school enrollment declines.
Based on average of survey data from 2022–2023, Johns Hopkins University's Homeschool Hub, which compiles information about DIY education, estimates that 5.82 percent of American K-12 students were homeschooled that year. Of course, that's down from the height of the pandemic when public schools closed or just dropped the ball.
"In the first week (April 23-May 5) of Phase 1 of the Household Pulse Survey, about 5.4% of U.S. households with school-aged children reported homeschooling," the Census Bureau reported of comparing data from the spring of 2020 to the fall of that year. "By fall, 11.1% of households with school-age children reported homeschooling (Sept. 30-Oct. 12)."
But before the pandemic, the folks at the Homeschool Hub remind us, "homeschooled students between the ages of 5 and 17 made up 2.8% of the total student population in the United States in 2019." That means that, while a lot of families that took to homeschooling out of necessity returned to familiar public schools when they could, enough stuck with it to more than double the number of homeschooled kids. With COVID-19 and intrusive public health policies largely a bad memory, homeschooling continues as an increasingly popular practice as a matter of choice.
In a June article about declining public school enrollment in EducationWeek, Mark Lieberman explained that about half of the loss can be attributed to population changes as the number of kids declines, but about 20 percent fled to private alternatives and another 20 percent turned to homeschooling. (Another 10 percent are unaccounted for, though some probably skipped kindergarten and others may be in DIY arrangements such as homeschooling and microschools, but unreported.)
Lieberman delved into the school choice programs that let education funds follow students to the options of their choice rather than being assigned to brick-and-mortar public schools. But he didn't examine what might drive families to abandon the familiar for education alternatives the require greater dedication and commitment.
Disappointment with schools' pandemic responses clearly played a role in driving many families to try educating their own kids—and many liked the experience. But so do endless battles over how kids are taught and, especially, what is incorporated in the lessons presented to them by often deeply politicized schools. To please one faction of parents with spin that they like is to inherently alienate others.
"Schools in many parts of the U.S. have become a battleground and parental involvement is one of the topics at the center," ABC News reported last September. "Fights in school board meetings, including in Chester County, [Pennsylvania] have erupted over how race, sexual orientation, gender and other topics are brought up, or taught, in the classroom."
Families can fight school administrators and other parents in struggles that inevitably leave those on the losing side unhappy with lesson content. It makes sense for those who lose to withdraw their children from the public schools in favor of lesson plans and approaches that meet their standards. For that matter, it's tempting for even those on the winning side to forego the curriculum wars and just pick the education they like for their kids without battling their neighbors. Why argue with your ideological opponents over what should be taught when you can ignore them and teach your kids what you please?
"When parents can choose where and how their children will be educated, they're no longer at the mercy of politicians and bureaucrats," the Cato Institute's Colleen Hroncich wrote in 2022. "That means they don't have to rely on political battles when it comes to education."
That's undoubtedly a big part of the impetusmothe for recent school choice victories that expand options for families, as well as decisions parents and students make to embrace those options. Homeschooling and other education alternatives are on the rise because they're liberating, and they work.
The post Homeschooling Grows as an Escape from Failing Schools and Curriculum Fights appeared first on Reason.com.
During an interview on a podcast, MAGA Party Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance discussed his parenting style, which includes telling his 7-year-old to "shut the hell up" when the child is speaking about something that interests him.
Here's the clip:
I'm like, "oh no."
The post JD Vance brags that he told his 7-year-old to "shut the hell up"about Pokemon when Trump called him (video) appeared first on Boing Boing.
Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance has been in the news for an old clip of him talking about how the tax code should punish adults without kids. While Vance's proposal probably aims to address demographic concerns, it represents a misguided approach that contradicts fundamental principles of economic freedom and fairness.
And you know what? That's precisely what our tax code already does, in this case and many others.
Using the tax code to "reward" parents and "punish" nonparents is at odds with the idea of a neutral, efficient tax system. In an ideal and fair world, the tax base would be broad but taxed at a low rate. People making the same income should be paying the same level of taxes no matter how they choose to live their lives.
Unfortunately, the tax code is neither fair nor neutral. It punishes and rewards all sorts of behaviors based on what government officials decide is good or bad.
For instance, the tax code does, in fact, treat people with kids more favorably than it treats those who do not have kids.* There's the child tax credit, of course. Then there's the earned income tax credit, which is more generous for families with children than those without. And there is no shortage of other provisions, such as a very significant deduction for heads of households and another for dependent care, which do the same thing.
It's hard to know what Vance's proposal really entails. Does he want another surtax on childless parents? Does he want to expand the child tax credit and make it a universal basic income like many conservatives and progressives want? It's also unclear whether he is simply failing to see that our tax code already delivers on his wishes and punishes childless adults. Either way, I assume he is well intentioned and that he is rightfully concerned about the decline in fertility we are witnessing not just in this country but across the world.
Unfortunately, punishing childless parents with additional taxes wouldn't boost fertility. For one thing, we've had a child tax credit since the 1990s, and the tax break has been regularly extended. That hasn't encouraged people to have more kids.
That's not unique to the child tax credit. Lots of evidence exists showing that government programs of all sorts meant to encourage, reward, or stimulate the supply of babies usually fail. One of the most dramatic examples is South Korea. The country has spent over $200 billion on such policies over the past 16 years, and fertility rates are still falling.
There isn't any doubt that more people, and hence more babies, are a boon for our lives and our economy. But that alone isn't a good reason for government subsidies. And while raising kids is expensive, that's no justification for a government tax break, either.
Besides, careful studies have shown the cost of raising a child in America has been decreasing for six decades. In the end, rather than rewarding families with lesser taxes at the expense of childless adults, I would encourage advocates to focus on removing existing government barriers—like overzealous policies that make child care more expensive without making kids measurably safer—that make life more complicated for families.
Ultimately, these are only secondary aspects of a much bigger debate. Our tax code is incredibly unfair. It's not just childless adults that face a surcharge compared to parents. Tax breaks for homeowners mean that renters pay more money for the same amount of housing. Households which include a college student pay less in taxes. People who can afford an electric vehicle can secure a tax break that others cannot.
These tax breaks for some are not just unfair to the taxpayers who don't get them—they also turn our tax code into a complicated mess that requires many millions of collective hours to comply with. Instead of adding more complexity and bias, we should be moving in the opposite direction—toward a simpler, flatter, and more neutral code that treats all taxpayers equally.
Using the tax code as a tool for social engineering is misguided. It leads to economic inefficiencies and infringes on individual liberty. Rather than doubling down on the problematic aspects of our current system, we should be working toward comprehensive reform. Only then can we hope to see taxes as something that truly serves the interests of all Americans, regardless of their personal choices.
COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM
*CORRECTION: The original version of this article misstated in part who benefits more from the current tax code.
The post J.D. Vance Wants To Control You With Taxes appeared first on Reason.com.
Pixar's Inside Out, released in 2015, was a delightful—if tear-jerking—journey through the mind of a precocious 11-year-old girl named Riley and the five emotions (Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust) that attempted to pilot her subconscious through a disruptive cross-country move.
The first Inside Out arrived on the precipice of a major change in how American culture treats mental health. While the first film's handling of Riley's slump into depression felt boundary pushing, its sequel comes at a time when the risks of talking too much about mental health are starting to be examined.
In Inside Out 2, Riley faces another mental health catastrophe. Two years have passed, and Joy—voiced by an energetic Amy Poehler—is still leading Riley's team of emotions. The now-teenage Riley has just graduated middle school with top marks, two best friends, and a solid self-concept lovingly curated by Joy.
However, peace doesn't last for long. The night before Riley is set to attend a sleepaway hockey camp, puberty—coming in the form of a literal wrecking ball—blasts into her subconscious. As part of Riley's mental overhaul, she gets four new emotions: the bright orange, Animal-esque Anxiety (voiced by a jittery Maya Hawke), Ennui, Embarrassment, and Envy.
Riley's new emotions quickly take over, insisting that she needs more complex, sophisticated emotions to guide her, leaving the old crew literally bottled up, trapped in a dark vault in the back of Riley's brain.
Ruled by Anxiety, things quickly go south for Riley, who becomes convinced that the only way to ensure that she isn't lonely in high school is to get on her new school's competitive, championship-winning hockey team. As a result, she becomes crippled by self-doubt—and ends up alienating the friends she already has.
In order to save her from completely spiraling out of control, the old team of emotions must journey through the labyrinth of Riley's mind, back to her mental control panel before it's too late.
For those familiar with the first film, Inside Out 2 hits many of the same beats as its predecessor. Riley faces a big life change, and to weather it, Joy has to learn to relinquish some control over Riley's mind. In the first film, that meant letting Riley feel sadness. In the sequel, the lesson is a bit more complicated: Joy learns that she needs to let Riley develop a multifaceted self-concept—one that includes acknowledgment of both her strengths and her flaws.
At a time when concern about skyrocketing rates of depression and anxiety among teenagers is at a high, Inside Out 2 ultimately presents a solution that wouldn't be amiss coming from Jonathan Haidt or Lenore Skenazy.
In the film, Riley's emotions—especially Joy and Anxiety—ultimately serve a parental role, attempting to protect her and lead her to make good choices, while also having limited ability to control her actions. Riley can only become well-adjusted when her most active emotions learn to relinquish some control.
In Inside Out 2, it's not hard to see Anxiety as a stand-in for an ever-hovering helicopter parent. Anxiety is motivated by an earnest desire to secure Riley's future, but her relentless planning and prodding ultimately make Riley miserable. As in the first film, Joy too has to learn to let go—though that particular beat is slightly less straightforward than in the first Inside Out.
While Inside Out 2 still has plenty of tear-jerking moments, the—ahem—emotional core of the film is less solid. The new emotions aren't as fully developed as their predecessors, and some of the old emotions end up getting lost in the shuffle. The climax of the film, too, doesn't have the same gut-punching impact as the first film's. However, while Inside Out 2 doesn't quite reach the heights of its predecessor, I found it hard to leave the theater with any hard feelings.
The post Is <i>Inside Out 2</i> Secretly About Helicopter Parenting? appeared first on Reason.com.
A study just published in the prestigious Journal of Anxiety Disorders describes a "novel treatment" for clinically anxious kids: letting them do new things, on their own, without their parents.
In other words, letting them be Free-Range Kids.
The pilot study, by Long Island University psychology professor Camilo Ortiz and his doctoral student Matthew Fastman, focused on four kids. In his everyday practice, Ortiz would often use cognitive behavioral therapy to treat kids with anxiety. This involves exposing patients to the very thing that scares them so that they can overcome it. For instance, a person deathly afraid of dogs might be shown a picture of a dog, then stand in the same room as a dog, and finally have to pet the dog.
Independence therapy works differently.
"We didn't actually have the kids face the things they're afraid of," says Ortiz.
The patients included:
The independence therapy involved each family separately visiting Ortiz five times, in his office or on Zoom. At the first session, only the parents came. Ortiz discussed the value of independence and even showed them this video of me, which, Ortiz said, "has been unbelievably effective. Many parents cry."(Ortiz told me he has been aware of Free-Range Kids since I let my 9-year-old ride the subway alone and has subsequently followed the work of Let Grow.)
At that visit, Ortiz asked the parents about their biggest concern. One couple said their daughter was too scared to sleep in her own bed. Another said their son wouldn't go up or downstairs in their home without them.
On the next visit, the child accompanied the parents. But without mentioning the big fear, Ortiz talked up independence and asked the kids what they'd like to start doing on their own. Despite their anxiety, they wanted to walk home from school, play chess in the park, take public transportation, and many other things. "OK," Ortiz told each child, "your assignment is to do one 'independence activity' a day for the next four weeks." The parents' assignment was to let them.
And yet, Ortiz confides, "The whole time I was rooting for things to go wrong." It's when a person goes from "I can't handle this!" to "Whoa—I handled it!" that the biggest growth occurs, he says.
For one of her independence activities, the girl afraid to sleep in her own bed took a city bus—and missed her stop. She was so upset that she actually talked to a stranger: the person next to her. That person told her to get off and walk two blocks back. She accomplished this, and the results were incredible.
"During the last week of treatment, unprompted," Ortiz wrote in the study, the girl "slept in her bed after never having made it through a night previously." And then she kept doing it.
Similarly, while out on an independent walk, the boy terrified about his health "really had to pee," Ortiz says. He relieved himself on the side of a building. Later, when Ortiz and the boy discussed this during a session, "we had a good laugh, but he actually learned something: Life can be messy, and it's OK."
Being psychologically flexible is one of the most important factors for predicting a good life.
In the end, the kids' anxieties markedly decreased. That was true even for the one patient who didn't finish the treatment. After two sessions, she was already "over the hump," said her parents, who reported that "she requested to stay home alone for four hours, went into a restaurant to ask for a table, babysat three kids, and organized an online art auction."
In psychological terms, it seems the kids' confidence spread from the new things they were doing to the things they'd been too scared to do. This mirrors a recent study of people afraid of both heights and spiders. Treated for one, they became less afraid of the other.
If further studies of independence therapy show this kind of success—Ortiz is seeking funding—it could prove a valuable alternative to cognitive behavioral therapy for three reasons. One, it seems to require fewer sessions, which makes it cheaper. Two, it doesn't require much training and could be done in schools. Three, it doesn't require the parents, kids, or therapists themselves to deal with the unpleasant, triggering fear.
"This is a pretty big finding—that you don't have to actually treat directly the thing someone is afraid of to make that thing better," says Ortiz.
The post 'Independence Therapy' Could Revolutionize Treatment for Child Anxiety appeared first on Reason.com.
"Wow!!!!" "Congrats!" "Next step: New York Times crossword puzzle!"
I began receiving such texts on Friday, after achieving the modern-day equivalent of immortality: I became a clue on Jeopardy!.
The category was "Points of View," and the clue was this: "Lenore Skenazy, who wrote of letting her 9-year-old right the NYC subway alone, moved this term from raising chickens to raising kids."
If you can't guess the answer, there's a clue at the top of this article.
So, how does one become a Jeopardy! clue? It's easy: Just let your kid do something the world considers dangerous, then write a column about why the world is wrong. Then write some more columns about it, appear on every possible talk show in defense of yourself, and then graciously accept the nickname "America's Worst Mom."
Then, start a blog about the issue and give it a catchy name, manage to trademark said name (shout out to Dale Cendali, America's top intellectual property lawyer and my dear friend from college), and write a book with the same title. Next, you have to speak at about a million schools, as well as corporate behemoths like Microsoft and DreamWorks. Perhaps most importantly, write to Matt Welch at Reason, out of the blue, and propose yourself as a columnist.
In fact, I recently rediscovered that first letter to Reason, which began:
Hi Matt!
Looking over all the topics on the Reason blog—ever fascinating—I see one that's not covered much: Parenting. And yet looking at parenting is how I found you and the whole Libertarian movement.
I was angry to learn about parents who'd been arrested for letting their kids wait in the car, or walk to the pizza parlor, or play in the park. I couldn't believe some daycare workers had to check in on sleeping babies every 15 minutes to record their sleep positions. I heard from teachers who had to fill out hazardous materials reports for each different brand of baby wipe and dish soap in their classrooms. And I still don't understand the drop-side crib recall — or so many of the CPSC's crusades (like this one against a sandal with a flower on it). And of course I hear about pretty much every Zero Tolerance travesty in this country, often days before the mainstream media gloms on. And that's not to mention all the so-called "safety precautions" set in motion after Sandy Hook, or the insane and arcane background checks now required of school volunteers. (I wrote about those in Monday's Wall Street Journal.)
So if you want to be on Jeopardy!—Jeopardy! Masters, actually—and have the contestant answer the clue correctly, just dedicate about 16 years to one specific topic and all its strange and infuriating ramifications, become the world's leading expert on the topic, and write for Reason!
The post How Free-Range Kids Became an Answer on <em>Jeopardy!</em> appeared first on Reason.com.
It’s never good to recommend a comedy by saying it makes you weep, but somehow Bluey, a comedy for kids, feels more real and more truthful than anything else on TV. I see so much of myself in Bandit’s triumphs and failures as he tries to parent his two daughters. I nod along to all of his unsuccessful parenting tactics that, I’ll admit, I’ve also tried on my own two kids. And then, at the end of so many episodes, I’ll realize that the front of my t-shirt is wet with tears because I've been crying.
There can’t be many people unfamiliar with Bluey, the biggest kids’ TV series on the planet, if not the biggest series overall. Each seven-minute episode is a slice-of-life sitcom about the Heelers, a family of anthropomorphic dogs living in Brisbane, Australia. Bluey and her younger sister Bingo live with parents Bandit and Chilli. The show started out focused on the playtimes the kids would have with each other or their parents. But it quickly sprawled out to create a rich world in the vein of The Simpsons, with a whole city’s worth of storylines. It can now regularly relegate the Heelers to the background to focus on the show’s deep cast of characters.
It closed out its third season with last Sunday's “The Sign,” a (comparatively) epic 28-minute episode and this week with “Surprise,” a sweet little postscript. The former’s long running time was described as a dry-run for any potential Bluey movie, wrapping up a number of the show’s storylines. It focuses on a wedding taking place at the Heeler’s home in the shadow of the family’s plan to relocate to another city. I won’t spoil too much beyond saying “The Sign” is a story about the bigness of change and how that affects parents and kids alike. Much of it focused on Bandit’s decision to move for a better-paid job and the way that impacted Chilli and the two girls. It’s a complicated issue, especially because it highlights that parents often just want to do what’s best for the kids.
“Surprise,” meanwhile, focuses more on the mundane struggle of Bandit trying to play two different games with his daughters at the same time. Much as Bluey wants to be just seven minutes of silly fun, it can’t quite help but be honest about the emotional and physical labor of parenting. All Bandit wants to do is sit down and watch sport on the TV but his daughters won’t allow him that luxury. He’s chased around the house, forced to pretend to teach a tennis ball to ride a bike and then pelted with ping pong balls fired from a toy launcher. (Bluey’s happy to highlight how often Bandit will get hit in the groin as a consequence of whatever game the girls are playing.)
The payoff to all of that effort comes in the final half minute of the episode, which is when I started sobbing. As much as it may be pitched as a palate cleanser after the scale and emotional heft of the previous episode, the final moments offer a real (if pleasant) punch to the gut. I can’t help but feel plenty of parallels in Bluey’s life and that of my own (similarly-aged) daughter, and feel a lot of kinship with Bandit as well. If I’m one one-hundredth as good a parent as this silly cartoon dog who often gets it wrong, then I’ll feel like I’ve done a good job.
There’s been speculation that this third season may be the end for Bluey. Bloomberg reported the uncertainty around creator Joe Brumm’s future with the show, although producer Sam Moor has said it will continue in some form. Any delay would also risk that the child actors – who remain anonymous for their own safety — will age out of being able to play their roles. But in many ways, Bluey can’t not continue given the show is now a multi-billion dollar cash cow for the BBC, which owns a big chunk of the show’s rights.
I don’t want to say goodbye to Bluey and the Heelers, and I’d prefer they kept the cast as-is and let them grow up alongside Bandit and Chilli. That, to me, would be an honest thing to do, rather than indulging in the fakery that dogs so many TV shows which face this problem. But if they have to go, I’ll choose to remember Bluey’s three perfect seasons through the highs and lows of parenting.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/what-we-watched-blueys-joyful-finales-161527282.html?src=rss© Ludo Studio
Frozen embryos are "children" under Alabama law, the state's Supreme Court says. Its decision could have major implications for the future of fertility treatments in the state.
Frozen embryos are "unborn children" and "unborn children are 'children,'" Justice Jay Mitchell wrote in the court's main opinion. Only two of nine justices dissented from the holding that an 1872 wrongful death statute applies to the destruction of frozen embryos.
The ruling seems to represent a turn toward judicial activism among members of Alabama's Supreme Court, which for a long time held that the law's text could not justify reading it to include "unborn children"—let alone frozen embryos.
It also portends a creeping Christian conservatism into court decisions, with Alabama Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker citing the Bible in his legal reasoning. In a concurring opinion, Parker justifies prohibitions on murder not by invoking classical liberal principles, like natural rights, but rather on the basis of "Man's creation in God's image" and the "you shall not murder" edict of the Sixth Commandment. "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," Parker writes.
The decision stems from suits brought by former patients of the Center for Reproductive Medicine in Mobile, Alabama. These patients—couples James and Emily LePage, William and Caroline Fonde, and Felicia Burdick-Aysenne and Scott Aysenne—had used in vitro fertilization (IVF) to successfully have several children and still had some embryos stored in the Center's "cryogenic nursery." In December 2020, a patient at the Mobile Infirmary Medical Center (which the Center was a part of) entered the cryogenic nursery unauthorized and proceeded to remove and then drop some of their frozen embryos, destroying them.
The couples sued the fertility clinic and the hospital, citing Alabama's Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. This 1872 law lets parents sue for monetary damages "when the death of a minor child is caused by the wrongful act, omission, or negligence of any person."
The LePages and the Fondes brought a joint lawsuit, and a separate suit was filed by the Aysennes. Both suits alleged negligence and the Aysenne suit also alleged wantonness and breach-of-contract.
A trial court granted the Center's motion to dismiss all but the breach-of-contract claim. "The cryopreserved, in vitro embryos involved in this case do not fit within the definition of a 'person'" or "'child,'" the lower court held.
The three couples appealed, and their suits were consolidated for Supreme Court purposes.
In a first-of-its-kind decision, the Alabama Supreme Court decided that frozen embryos are, indeed, children, rejecting the lower court's dismissal of the couples' wrongful death claims.
In the court's main opinion, Justice Jay Mitchell referred to frozen embryos in turn as "embryonic children" and "extrauterine children."
While the state's Wrongful Death of a Minor statute doesn't explicitly include "unborn children"—let alone "extrauterine children"—in its purview, "the ordinary meaning of 'child' includes children who have not yet been born," asserted Mitchell.
Furthermore, Alabama's Supreme Court "has long held that unborn children are 'children' for purposes of Alabama's that law," he wrote. The central question in this case, said Mitchell, is "whether the Act contains an unwritten exception to that rule for extrauterine children—that is, unborn children who are located outside of a biological uterus at the time they are killed."
The couples in this case raised some truly ridiculous arguments for why such an "exception" shouldn't exist. They argued that a finding that the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act doesn't apply to unborn children (including frozen embryos) would mean partial-birth abortions are legal, since the baby would no longer be in utero but would also not be fully born. They also suggested it would OK murdering hypothetical toddlers entirely gestated in artificial wombs, since such children—no matter how old they got—would not technically have been born.
Amazingly, the majority lent credence to these crazy arguments. They are "weighty concerns," wrote Mitchell, albeit ones that needn't be resolved at this time since "neither the text of the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act nor this Court's precedents exclude extrauterine children from the Act's coverage."
Not all of the justices agreed with the majority's logic, and some offered quite scathing rebukes of it.
For instance, Justice Brady E. Mendheim—who concurred with the result of the main opinion but disagreed with some of its reasoning—doesn't think that it's so clear cut that "child" includes frozen embryos. For one thing, the wrongful death statute in question was written a century before IVF was even a scientific possibility. Furthermore, other parts of Alabama law, including the 2019 Human Life Protection Act, explicitly define an unborn child as a human being in utero.
Justice Will Sellers also rejected the idea that this is an easy and obvious call. "Any sequence of linguistic gymnastics, cannot yield the conclusion that embryos developed through in vitro fertilization were intended by the legislature to be included in the definition of 'person,' much less the definition of 'minor child,'" he wrote. Rather, the inclusion of in utero children in certain statutes was there to allow for punishment of violence perpetrated against pregnant women. "To equate an embryo stored in a specialized freezer with a fetus inside of a mother is engaging in an exercise of result-oriented, intellectual sophistry, which I am unwilling to entertain," Sellers added.
Meanwhile, Justice Greg Cook—who dissented in full from the main opinion—rejects the idea that the 1872 law meant to include fetuses and zygotes in its definition of children, even when they are in utero.
The main opinion suggested that the "leading dictionary of that time defined the word 'child' as 'the immediate progeny of parents' and indicated that this term encompassed children in the womb," notes Cook. But if you look at the full entry in the cited dictionary, it indicates the opposite, saying "the term is applied to infants from their birth."
Furthermore, interpreting the Wrongful Death Act to include unborn children is a recent phenomenon. "There is no doubt that the common law [in 1872] did not consider an unborn infant to be a child capable of being killed for the purpose of civil liability or criminal-homicide liability," wrote Cook. "In fact, for 100 years after the passage of the Wrongful Death Act, our caselaw did not allow a claim for the death of an unborn infant, confirming that the common law in 1872 did not recognize that an unborn infant (much less a frozen embryo) was a 'minor child' who could be killed."
Thus, applying the wrongful death act to the loss of frozen embryos runs counter to the philosophy of originalism (the idea, common among libertarians and conservatives, that laws should be interpreted only as they were originally intended) and closer to the progressive idea of a malleable "living Constitution," suggests Cook. And he's not a fan. "It is not our role to expand the reach of a statute and "breathe life" into it by updating or amending it," Cook writes. If the legislature thinks the law needs expanding, it can do so.
Cook and Mendheim both object to characterizing the defense's position as seeking an "exception" for frozen embryos, because to declare it an exception to the state's protection of minor children assumes that embryos are minor children—a point that's far from a given. And they both pan the tacit acceptance of the out-there hypotheticals offered by the patients.
"The main opinion ignores the fact that it is not now—or for the foreseeable future—scientifically possible to develop a child in an artificial womb so that such a scenario could somehow unfold," writes Mendheim. Should that become possible, "the answer to this futuristic hypothetical is simple," writes Cook: "the Legislature can address future technologies and can do so far better than this Court."
Pointing out that no other state has interpreted wrongful death laws this way—and a number have specifically rejected it—Cook suggests that being "the sole outlier" should "cause us to carefully reexamine our conclusions."
He concludes the decision could end IVF in Alabama, since "no rational medical provider would continue to provide services for creating and maintaining frozen embryos knowing that they must continue to maintain such frozen embryos forever or risk the penalty of a Wrongful Death Act claim for punitive damages."
This fear was echoed by the defendants in this case, who told the court a finding that the statute includes frozen embryos could make IVF prohibitively expensive.
Barbara Collura, president and CEO of RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association, called the court's decision "terrifying" for people "who need in-vitro fertilization to build their families."
Chief Justice Parker's opinion suggests that their fears are not unfounded.
His opinion is chilling in the way is showcases the theocratic underpinnings on which he sees Alabama governance resting. Pointing to a 2018 amendment declaring it "the public policy of this state to recognize and support the sanctity of unborn life," he notes that the term sanctity can be defined as "holiness of life and character," godliness, and "the quality or state of being holy or sacred." He goes on to cite the King James Bible, noting that in Genesis man's creation was described as being "in the image of God." Its on these foundations that the legal treatment of frozen embryos should rest, he suggests.
According to Parker, this would not mean the end of IVF in Alabama. But it could mean changes that would seriously upend the IVF process.
In IVF, the process of preparing the body for ovulation and harvesting eggs can be extremely taxing on women's bodies, as well as time-consuming and expensive. After this, not all of the eggs collected may be successfully fertilized. And when viable embryos are created, it may take multiple tries at transferring one into a woman's body before implantation is successful. For all of these reasons, it makes sense for doctors to collect myriad eggs at one time, fertilize these eggs, and then freeze the viable embryos for later transfer, rather than harvesting eggs and creating a single new embryo for each transfer. (This also helps people who may want to create embryos when they are younger to use when they are somewhat older, or who may face illness that will impede their future fertility.) And to maximize the chances of success, doctors sometimes transfer two or more embryos at once.
Treating embryos as having the full legal rights of children could imperil all of these practices.
In Italy, "cryopreservation of embryos" is banned "except when a bona fide health risk or force majeure prevented the embryos from being transferred immediately after their creation," writes Parker. He also points approvingly to countries with other stringent regulations, such as a rule limiting the number of embryos that can be transferred at a time.
"These regulations adopted by other countries seem much more likely to comport with upholding the sanctity of life," Parker concludes, writing that "certain changes to the IVF industry's current creation and handling of embryos in Alabama will result from this decision."
Even if the ruling doesn't end IVF in Alabama, it could pave the way for changes that make fertility treatments more difficult, time-consuming, expensive, and impractical.
The post Frozen Embryos Are Now Children Under Alabama Law appeared first on Reason.com.
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