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Alabama hospital pauses IVF treatments after court ruling on embryos
Opinions |
2024/02/22 10:45
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Alabama’s largest hospital paused in vitro fertilization treatments Wednesday as providers and patients across the state scrambled to assess the impact of a court ruling that said frozen embryos are the legal equivalent of children.
The University of Alabama at Birmingham health system said in a statement that it must evaluate whether its patients or doctors could face criminal charges or punitive damages for undergoing IVF treatments. “We are saddened that this will impact our patients’ attempt to have a baby through IVF,” the statement from spokeswoman Savannah Koplon read.
Doctors and patients were gripped by a mixture of shock, anxiety and fear as they weighed how to proceed in the wake of the ruling by the all-Republican Alabama Supreme Court that put in question the future of IVF.
“Disbelief, denial, all the stages of grief. ... I was stunned,” said Dr. Michael C. Allemand, a reproductive endocrinologist at Alabama Fertility, which provides IVF services.
Allemand said they are having daily discussions about how to proceed. He said IVF is often the best treatment for patients who desperately want a child, and the ruling threatens doctors’ ability to provide that care.
“The moments that our patients are wanting to have by growing their families — Christmas mornings with grandparents, kindergarten, going in the first day of school, with little back-backs— all that stuff is what this is about. Those are the real moments that this ruling could deprive patients of,” he said.
Gabby and Spencer Goidel of Auburn, Alabama, turned to IVF after three miscarriages. The Alabama ruling came down on the same day Gabby began a 10-day series of daily injections ahead of egg retrieval, with the hopes of getting pregnant through IVF next month.
“When I saw this ruling, I got very angry and very hurt that it could potentially stop my cycle. People need to know this is affecting couples — real-life couples who are trying to start families, who are just trying to live the quote, unquote American dream,” Gabby Goidel, 26, said. She said her clinic is continuing to provide treatment for now but is reviewing the situation on a day-by-day basis.
Justices — citing language in the Alabama Constitution that the state recognizes the “rights of the unborn child” — said three couples could sue for wrongful death when their frozen embryos were destroyed in a accident at a storage facility.
“Unborn children are ‘children’ ... without exception based on developmental stage, physical location, or any other ancillary characteristics,” Justice Jay Mitchell wrote in Friday’s majority ruling. Mitchell said the court had previously ruled that a fetus killed when a woman is pregnant is covered under Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act and nothing excludes “extrauterine children from the Act’s coverage.”
Alabama Chief Justice Tom Parker, in a scripture-draped concurring opinion, wrote that, “even before birth, all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.”
While the court case centered on whether embryos were covered under the wrongful death of a minor statute, some said treating the embryo as a child — rather than property — could have broader implications and call into question many of the practices of IVF.
“If this is now a person, will we be able to freeze embryos?” Barbara Collura, CEO of RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association, said.
The fertility clinic and hospital in the Alabama case could ask the court to reconsider the decision or ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the matter if they believe there is a conflict with federal law. |
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Russia indicts ICC prosecutor, judge who issued war crimes
Opinions |
2023/05/22 12:33
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Russia on Sunday announced indictments in absentia for a judge and prosecutor of the International Criminal Court who issued a war crimes warrant for President Vladimir Putin.
A statement from the national Investigative Committee said the judge, Rosario Salvatore Aitala, and prosecutor Khan Karim Asad Ahmad are both charged with “preparing to attack a representative of a foreign country enjoying international protection in order to complicate international relations.”
Each also faces other charges. Conviction could bring prison terms of up to 12 years. The committee also said other ICC officials are being investigated.
The March warrant against Putin accuses him of personal responsibility for the abductions of children from Ukraine. The court also charged Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian presidential commissioner for children’s rights.
It was the first time the global court has issued a warrant against a leader of one of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. |
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State seeks long prison term for accused NYC subway gunman
Opinions |
2023/01/03 11:06
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Prosecutors plan to seek a decades-long prison sentence for a man who is expected to plead guilty this week to opening fire in a subway car and wounding 10 riders in an attack that shocked New York City.
Frank James, 63, is scheduled to enter a guilty plea on Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court, admitting that he was responsible for the April 12 attack. It set off a massive 30-hour manhunt that ended when he called the police on himself.
Prosecutors told Judge William F. Kuntz II in a letter late last week that they plan to ask him to go beyond the roughly 32-year to 39-year sentence that federal sentencing guidelines would recommend. James planned the attack for years and endangered the lives of dozens of people, prosecutors said in the letter.
Defense attorneys did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday, when courts were closed to observe the New Year’s holiday.
James had been scheduled to stand trial in late February.
His lawyers informed the judge on Dec. 21 that James wanted to plead guilty. Prosecutors say he plans to plead guilty to 11 charges without a plea agreement.
Ten of those charges — each one corresponding to a specific victim — accuse him of committing a terrorist attack against a mass transportation system carrying passengers and employees.
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Nicholas C. Minshew, Attorney - Minshew & Ahluwalia LLP
Opinions |
2022/03/19 15:38
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Nicholas C. Minshew, Attorney at Law, concentrates his practice in the area of Family Law including divorce, separation, child support, child custody, alimony, division of property, separation agreements, domestic violence, prenuptial agreements, and child support enforcement & modification. Mr. Minshew provides legal services to clients in Washington, D.C., and throughout Maryland, including Montgomery County, Frederick County, and Prince George’s County.
Mr. Minshew obtained his Juris Doctorate degree from the American University, Washington College of Law in 2000, where he worked as an editor for the Administrative Law Review. After receiving his law degree, Mr. Minshew worked as an attorney for the global law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, and for Leonard Street & Deinard LLP representing companies in Federal proceedings. During that time, Mr. Minshew redirected his focus to provide legal services directly to individuals and families.
In February, 2010, Mr. Minshew open his law firm to focus on obtaining favorable results for his clients while providing individualized and cost-effective legal representation, and to pursue his legal interests by devoting his practice to Family Law.
The Law Firm of Minshew & Ahluwalia is located near the District and Circuit Courts for Montgomery County, Maryland and within walking distance to the Rockville Metro Station on the Red Line.
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Biden assigns study on delicate issue of Supreme Court
Opinions |
2021/04/10 16:13
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President Joe Biden on Friday ordered a study of adding seats to the Supreme Court, creating a bipartisan commission that will spend the next six months examining the politically incendiary issues of expanding the court and instituting term limits for its justices.
In launching the review, Biden fulfilled a campaign promise made amid pressure from activists and Democrats to realign the Supreme Court after its composition tilted sharply to the right during President Donald Trump’s term. Trump added three justices to the high court, including conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was confirmed to replace liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg just days before last year’s presidential election.
During the campaign, Biden repeatedly sidestepped questions on expanding the court. A former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden has asserted that the system of judicial nominations is “getting out of whack,” but has not said if he supports adding seats or making other changes to the current system of lifetime appointments, such as imposing term limits.
The 36-member commission, composed largely of academics, was instructed to spend 180 days studying the issues. But it was not charged with making a recommendation under the White House order that created it.
The panel will be led by Bob Bauer, who served as White House counsel for former President Barack Obama, and Cristina Rodriguez, a Yale Law School professor who served in the Office of Legal Counsel for Obama.
The makeup of the Supreme Court, always a hot-button issue, ignited again in 2016 when Democrats declared that Republicans gained an unfair advantage by blocking Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to fill the seat left empty by the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, refused to even hold hearings on filling the vacancy, even though it was more than six months until the next presidential election.
In the wake of McConnell’s power play, some progressives have viewed adding seats to the court or setting term limits as a way to offset the influence of any one president on its makeup. Conservatives, in turn, have denounced such ideas as “court-packing” similar to the failed effort by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s.
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