Rep. Jasmine Crockett brought her ability to drop mics all over Republicans’ hypocrisies and failures to MSNBC on Sunday. The Democratic congresswoman was asked by host Ali Velshi about fallout from the recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling that jeopardized the practice of in vitro fertilization by ruling that frozen embryos are legally equivalent to children.
Asked whether Republicans are “confused by this IVF stuff,” Crockett responded, “They’re not confused. They’re just stupid.” Then she really unleashed on her GOP colleagues.
They just don't know what they're doing. And this is why they need to stay in their lane. Right? Like, we're not doctors, and we should allow doctors to be the one to tell us what we should and should not allow. This is a science thing.
I know that they are trying to rid this country of science and rid this country of history and all the very basic things—you know, they obviously struggle with math as well. Listen, we need to send the Republicans back to elementary school so that they can get the basics and understand what it is that we should be relying upon.
Including our doctors, our doctors that are telling us: Listen, these policies will kill women. Listen, these policies will disallow those that actually want to bring children into this world from being able to do so. And this idea of trying to define personhood before someone has actually entered the world is absolutely insane to me. I mean, I saw on social media just the other day, someone said the reason that we don't call IVF, we don't look at that and say “these are children” is because when is the last time you can put a child in the freezer and they actually live?
Right? Like that's not what you do, but you keep them in the freezer. And so is this idea that we're going to ignore the experts. That's why we're struggling with climate change. That's why we're struggling with repro. That's why we're struggling in general in this country. And it's time to get back on track. It's time to listen to the experts instead of listening to those that I would consider to be ignorant.
Since the Alabama ruling, Republicans have been running around in circles, acting shocked and appalled that their anti-abortion rhetoric has led to real-life consequences.
Republicans like Rep. Michelle Steel, who said she benefited from the “gift” of IVF with her own pregnancy, have gone to their social media platforms to decry any IVF bans despite co-sponsoring, along with 123 other Republicans, the Life at Conception Act that explicitly “declares that the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution is vested in each human being at all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization, cloning, or other moment at which an individual comes into being.”
The idea that the “moment of fertilization” makes an embryo a child is exactly what the Alabama Supreme Court affirmed, and while it is a bananas cuckoo crazy ruling, it’s the logical conclusion to what conservatives and forced-birth advocates have been pushing for decades.
Republished with permission from Daily Kos.
