Whose Life Matters to Today’s Republican Party?

Events in Alabama and Oklahoma shine a harsh light on today’s GOP and its skewed vision of life in America, wherein embroyos matter more than queer lives.

I’ve been thinking a lot these days about the Republican Party (and the American right in general), and how they conceptualize whose life matters and whose doesn’t. Part of this has stemmed from the fact that we are now being faced with yet another Trump candidacy, with all of the barely-restrained violence that entails (this was the man, after all, who egged on a violent assault against our democracy). A greater part, however, has stemmed from two separate — but, I think, related — events in Alabama and Oklahoma that show, in stark terms, just how it is that today’s GOP conceives of life, how that life should be defined, and whose life has value , and whose doesn’t.

In Alabama, that state’s Supreme Court declared that embryos created through IVF should be considered children, a ruling that, in my opinion, is as embarrassing as it is misguided. In the aftermath, many Republican elected officials had to scramble to make sure that they made clear that they were, in fact, in support of IVF. Despite this, it remains clear that this ruling is going to continue to have far-reaching…