The media freakout over the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that embryos are people continued on Thursday’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, where the MSNBC eponymous host welcomed OBGYN Jennifer Lincoln to label the state “dangerous” and claim Evangelicals are trying to kick women out of the workplace.
Mitchell led Lincoln with two reasons why a woman may seek IVF treatment. The first had to do with the ramifications of certain life choices, “a lot of women are staying in the workplace longer and not having children, delaying marriage until their late 30s or 40s. For them, this can be very, very important, because that's when infertility becomes more of an issue than women who were, you know, years ago, decades ago, marrying in their teens and 20s, early 20s.”
The second was more medical, “There are people who have genetic issues, like BRCA1, who, even as college students, prophylactically have double mastectomies, have hysterectomies. So, they store their eggs for later in life when they’re going to meet a partner. Talk to me about the medical aspects of that.”
Lincoln began her response by going after Alabama, “Let's also set the stage here in Alabama. It is already one of the most dangerous places to give birth when you think about maternal mortality, infant mortality, preterm birth rates. It's also the state that has the highest rates of pregnancy criminalization. It also doesn’t require sex ed and as you already highlighted: total abortion ban.”
While Mitchell may seek to portray Lincoln as some sort of apolitical medical expert, Lincoln not only has an ACLU author page, but on that page she lists her pronouns, is seen wearing a shirt that says “Viva La Vulva,” and is listed as the executive director of Mayday Health. Her bio also says, “She is also the co-founder of Obstetricians for Reproductive Justice and the founder of Three for Freedom, a website that serves as a hub to help people take control of their reproductive futures in all 50 states.”
On the pronoun nonsense, on her own website, Lincoln claims to be passionate about helping women, even if she can’t really define the term, “I’m an OBGYN whose passion is helping girls, women, and those assigned female at birth understand their bodies and feel empowered to advocate for themselves.”
For Lincoln, Alabama is un-American, “So, already a very dangerous place to want to grow a family however Alabamans who want to and should be able to, they should not have to be told to move or go somewhere else to start a family. That's just not very American if you ask me.”
Moving on to Evangelicals and presumably pro-lifers more broadly, she continued:
Those who do not have the money to do so cannot do that and so they’re pursuing growing their family and may need to, as you said, use fertility treatments because they have delayed childbearing, which is part of this whole package of, you know, wanting to take these things away from, as you highlighted, the Evangelical side, it’s the idea of getting women back in the home, you know, this idea of a nuclear family, not having women in the workplace, this is part of dismantling that.
Throughout the media focus on this story there have been plenty of denunciations of the decision as well as proclamations about how the ruling's unpopularity puts Republicans in a rough spot politically, but precious little time has been spent on the logic of when life begins. Unfortunately, that is not too surprising when the media’s experts use phrases like “assigned female at birth.”
Here is a transcript for the February 22 show:
MSNBC Andrea Mitchell Reports
2/22/2024
12:15 PM ET
ANDREA MITCHELL: Let me talk to you about the medical issues here because people who are not involved, couples who are not involved may not realize how widespread the impact could be, is already for those in Alabama. First of all--
JENNIFER LINCOLN: Sure.
MITCHELL: -- a lot of women are staying in the workplace longer and not having children, delaying marriage until their late 30s or 40s. For them, this can be very, very important, because that's when infertility becomes more of an issue than women who were, you know, years ago, decades ago, marrying in their teens and 20s, early 20s.
Second of all, there are people who have genetic issues, like BRCA1, who, even as college students, prophylactically have double mastectomies, have hysterectomies. So, they store their eggs for later in life when they’re going to meet a partner. Talk to me about the medical aspects of that.
LINCOLN: Right. Absolutely. Let's also set the stage here in Alabama. It is already one of the most dangerous places to give birth when you think about maternal mortality, infant mortality, preterm birth rates. It's also the state that has the highest rates of pregnancy criminalization. It also doesn’t require sex ed and as you already highlighted: total abortion ban.
So, already a very dangerous place to want to grow a family however Alabamans who want to and should be able to, they should not have to be told to move or go somewhere else to start a family. That's just not very American if you ask me and those who do not have the money to do so cannot do that and so they’re pursuing growing their family and may need to, as you said, use fertility treatments because they have delayed childbearing, which is part of this whole package of, you know, wanting to take these things away from, as you highlighted, the Evangelical side, it’s the idea of getting women back in the home, you know, this idea of a nuclear family, not having women in the workplace, this is part of dismantling that.
And then for people who have issues with fertility or genetic disorders, this is the one way they can safely grow a family, which, if you ask me is very pro-life, and is now being restricted because of laws where justices think that embryos are people, regardless of location, without limitation, according to the ruing.
