Civil Liberties
Related: About this forumThe Alabama Chief Justice Who Invoked God in Deciding the Embryo Case
Chief Justice Tom Parker has long been revered by conservative groups as an architect for the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Tom Parker announced his plans to run for chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court in Montgomery in 2006. Jamie Martin/Associated Press
By Rick Rojas
Reporting from Atlanta
Feb. 22, 2024
Updated 12:48 p.m. ET
In an Alabama Supreme Court decision that has rattled reproductive medicine across the country, a majority of the justices said the law was clear that frozen embryos should be considered children: Unborn children are children. ... But the courts chief justice, Tom Parker, drew on more than the Constitution and legal precedent to explain his determination. .
Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, he wrote in a concurring opinion that invoked the Book of Genesis and the prophet Jeremiah and quoted at length from the writings of 16th- and 17th-century theologians. ... Even before birth, he added, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.
Read the Alabama Supreme Courts Ruling
{snip}
The 8-to-1 decision last week by the justices, all of whom are Republicans, overturned a lower courts ruling that frozen embryos were not considered children. The justices found that the couples could pursue a wrongful-death lawsuit against a Mobile fertility clinic over a 2020 episode in which a hospital patient removed frozen embryos from tanks of liquid nitrogen and dropped them on the floor.
{snip}
The majority, in its opinion, cited a 1872 statute that allows parents to sue over the wrongful death of a child and found that unborn children, including extrauterine children, were included in that. ... In his concurring opinion, Justice Parker reached further back, citing Genesis: The principle itself that human life is fundamentally distinct from other forms of life and cannot be taken intentionally without justification has deep roots that reach back to the creation of man in the image of God. ... It underscored the philosophy that has guided him through two decades on the court. ... When judges dont rule in the fear of the Lord, everythings falling apart, he once wrote, citing the Book of Psalms, according to the ProPublica investigation. The whole world is coming unglued.
Rick Rojas is a national correspondent covering the American South. He has been a staff reporter for The Times since 2014. More about Rick Rojas
bucolic_frolic
(46,818 posts)moniss
(5,568 posts)can recall judges like this who justified discrimination, excused away police brutality, excused away rape etc. I've said before that many states in the South want people to believe they have some shiny new image and have left a troubling past behind. I never bought their BS and I don't now.
underpants
(186,450 posts)This is what you get.
sanatanadharma
(4,074 posts)Unborn is one thing but never-to-be-born is a whole larger ball of twine to unwind.
Even before birth, he added, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.
See, human life begins before conception, all births are pre-planned by a God who knew you before your Mom's eggs and Dad's sperm were born.
Menstruation will be outlawed as a effacing the glory of God by denying birth to an image.
Imagine that?!
MOMFUDSKI
(7,080 posts)that knows best
LetMyPeopleVote
(154,110 posts)The Seven Mountain Mandate, which calls on Christians to impose fundamentalist values on all aspects of American life. The Seven Mountains Mandate is extreme RWNJ/religious bigot type theory that is scary. This idiot judge is a true RWNJ/QANON supporter.
Link to tweet
Link to tweet
https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/alabama-supreme-court-chief-justice-spreads-christian-nationalist-rhetoric
Enlow is a pro-Trump prophet and leading proponent of the Seven Mountain Mandate, a quasi-biblical blueprint for theocracy that asserts that Christians must impose fundamentalist values on American society by conquering the seven mountains of cultural influence in U.S. life: government, education, media, religion, family, business, and entertainment.
Enlow has also repeatedly pushed the QAnon conspiracy theory, sometimes even connecting it to the Seven Mountain Mandate. Per Right Wing Watch, Enlow has claimed that world leaders are satanic pedophiles who steal blood and do sacrifices and that there is presently no real democracy on the planet because over 90 percent of world leaders are involved in pedophilia and are being blackmailed.
On February 16, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are people, with the same rights as living children, and that a person can be held liable for destroying them, imperiling in vitro fertilization treatment in the state. In a concurring opinion, Parker quoted the Bible, suggested that Alabama had adopted a theologically based view of the sanctity of life, and said that human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God......
Parkers ties to extreme right-wing Christian and prophetic media figures extends beyond the interview with Enlow.
Last year, Christian nationalist media figure Sean Feucht said Parker had invited him into the courts chambers for a worship session. Parker also joined a prayer call in March 2023 with supposed prophets and apostles, and he prayed that there will be a growing hunger in the judges of Alabama, and around the nation for more of God. And that they will be receptive to his moves toward restoration of the judges, so that they can play their forecast role in revival in this nation.