The Freedom From Religion Foundation is running a full-page New York Times ad Friday on International Women’s Day excoriating the recent anti-IVF Alabama Supreme Court decision.
“It’s time to wake up to the growing threat of Christian nationalism,” asserts the national state/church watchdog made up of 40,000 freethinkers (atheists and agnostics). “Laws should be based on our secular Constitution, not on ‘the wrath of a holy God.’”
The ad points out that the word “God” appears nowhere in our secular Constitution, but appears 41 times in a concurring opinion by the Alabama chief justice, who warned that the “wrath of a holy God” is incurred if frozen embryos for fertility treatment are destroyed.
“This theocratic decision granted fetal personhood to zygotes while threatening to deny infertile couples the only means by which they can have children,” as the FFRF ad notes, “Even though this assault against in-vitro fertilization apparently will be temporarily remedied by the Alabama Legislature, fertility treatment nationwide remains endangered by the anti-abortion goal to enact national fetal personhood legislation.”
FFRF adds that “Zealots aren’t limiting their crusade to banning abortion and mifepristone. Contraception and same-sex marriage are next on the chopping block. Individual rights, our very democracy, will not be safe until religion is kept in its place — out of our laws.”
FFRF’s ad concludes: “On this International Women’s Day, please act to defend endangered religious liberty. Stand up for the separation of church and state . . . before it’s too late.”
Action taken this week by the Legislature and governor to protect IVF procedures in Alabama still do not address the root problem of the court’s decision: that embryos are legally “children,” comments FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor.
The ad was made possible thanks to generous donors to FFRF’s advertising fund. Click on the image to enlarge.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with more than 40,000 members across the country. FFRF protects the constitutional separation between state and church and educates about nontheism.
