It isn't only the anti-abortion folks who've remained silent...
An Israeli bomb destroyed 4,000 embryos at a Gaza IVF centre. Where is the
outrage?
Arwa Mahdawi
The anti-abortion crowd who believe embryos are ‘extrauterine children’ have
been weirdly silent about the strike
Sat 20 Apr 2024
The majority of Gaza’s frozen embryos have been destroyed
If you, or someone you love, has ever had fertility issues, you will know just
how heavy an emotional toll they can take. IVF, in particular, is not easy. You
have to inject yourself with hormones. Then you undergo anaesthesia and
have an operation to retrieve the eggs. Then the embryos are made. Finally,
you implant the embryos. It’s a long, expensive and involved process that can
take a physical and emotional toll. At the end, you hope it’ll all be worth it. At
the end, you hope there will be a baby.
For many families in Gaza, those hopes were permanently wiped out by one
Israeli missile strike. In December, an Israeli shell, possibly provided by the
US, hit Gaza City’s largest fertility clinic, the Al Basma IVF centre. The
explosion, according to a Reuters piece that came out this week, “blasted the
lids off five liquid nitrogen tanks stored in a corner of the embryology unit”.
More than 4,000 embryos were destroyed, along with 1,000 more specimens
of sperm and unfertilized eggs.
One single strike. That’s all it took. One single strike and thousands of
potential lives were wiped out. For at least half of the couples who were
patients at the clinic, many of whom had saved up for years to afford
treatments, those embryos were their last chance to get pregnant,
Bahaeldeen Ghalayini, the obstetrician who established the clinic, told
Reuters.
Why would Israel bomb a fertility center? The Israeli military’s press desk told
Reuters that it would look into it. Judging by Israel’s record of looking into its
own actions, you shouldn’t hold your breath waiting for answers. No doubt
Israel will just say it received special intelligence that at least 25% of those
embryos were going to grow up to be terrorists. Whatever the press desk
says, if it bothers saying anything, it won’t make a difference to the Biden
administration. Israeli leaders have made a litany of genocidal statements
and the US government is still sending a never-ending supply of
unconditional aid.
Just stop for a moment and imagine if this had happened in Israel or in any
other country considered a western ally. Imagine if 4,000 Israeli embryos had
been destroyed. Imagine the justifiable outrage, the immense sadness, it
would have caused. This story, however, which has taken months to come
out, has barely seemed to register. And why would it? As many western
leaders have made clear, they simply do not think of Palestinians as human.
Unless I’ve missed it, the anti-abortion crowd has also been weirdly silent
about this story. You’d think the people who have said they believe embryos
are “extrauterine children” might muster a little outrage at this mass murder.
But no, evangelical Christians are too busy cheering on Israel in the hope that
all the bloodshed will bring about the rapture and the second coming of
Jesus Christ. More than half of US evangelicals have said they support
Israel’s existence because it is important for fulfilling the end times prophecy.
I don’t know if the end times are coming, but Gaza certainly looks
apocalyptical. Every day, the news seems to get more harrowing. More than
32,000 Palestinians are dead, including an estimated 6,000 mothers; UN
Women reports that 19,000 children have been orphaned. Unicef estimates
that a thousand children in Gaza have become amputees since October.
“This is the biggest cohort of pediatric amputees in history,” a London-based
surgeon told the New Yorker. Not a single university is still standing and the
vast majority of schools have been destroyed. More than 10,000 children are
dead. Malnutrition will rob an entire generation of its future.
“This is not a normal war,” one physician said. “The war in Ukraine has killed
500 kids in two years and the war in Gaza has killed over 10,000 in less than
five months. We have seen wars before but this is something that is a dark
stain on our shared humanity.”
This point can’t be stressed enough. What is happening is not normal.
Bombing fertility clinics is not normal. Don’t let any of this become
normalized.
A year of suffering in Sudan
The year-long war in Sudan has become one of the worst humanitarian crises
in the world and created the world’s worst displacement crisis. “It’s not so
much a civil war as it is a war against civilians, whose homes, livelihoods and
very lives have been the collateral damage so far,” Nesrine Malik wrote in a
must-read column in the Guardian. As with all crises, the most vulnerable pay
the highest price: “More than 7,000 new mothers could die in the coming
months if their nutritional and health needs remain unmet,” UN Women has
warned. “More than 6.7 million people are at risk of gender-based violence,
and reports of intimate partner violence, sexual exploitation and abuse, and
trafficking in persons are widespread and increasing.”
Nestlé adds sugar to infant milk in poorer countries, report finds
In Nestlé’s main European markets, meanwhile, there is no sugar in products
targeted at babies between six months and one year. Nigel Rollins, a medical
officer at the World Health Organization, said the findings represented “a
double standard … that can’t be justified”. While shocking, this report is not
much of a surprise; Nestlé has been accused of dubious business practices
for decades. In 1977, campaigners started boycotting the company because
of its aggressive marketing of formula milk over breastfeeding in developing
countries. Since then, the Swiss multinational has been dogged by
accusations of unethical advertising.
Sextortion scams are driving some teen boys to suicide
Scammers pretending to be teenage girls are tricking teenage boys into
sending them nudes, and then blackmailing them. “The scam, which the FBI
calls sextortion, has become one of the fastest-growing crimes targeting
children in the US,” Bloomberg reports. “In an 18-month period ending in
March 2023, the FBI says, at least 20 minors, primarily boys, killed
themselves after falling victim to the scam.”
Smoking among middle-class English women up 25% in 10 years
“In contrast, there was a drop in the proportion of less advantaged women of
the same age who smoked, from 29% to 22%, while smoking rates among
men of all backgrounds remained stable,” the Guardian reports. It’s not clear
why younger, affluent women are smoking more but social media is a
possible culprit. (Isn’t it always?)
US Olympians slam Nike for skimpy women’s track kit
Long-jumper Tara Davis-Woodhall summed up the general vibe when she
exclaimed: “My hoo haa is gonna be out!”
The week in pawtriarchy
Did you know that hedgehogs can suffer from balloon syndrome? You do
now. Air can get into a gap under their skin, causing them to inflate to the
size of a football. One afflicted hedgehog (now named Bounce) was so large,
a bus passenger in Gloucestershire, England, spotted her and took her to a
rescue charity. They managed to treat Bounce successfully. They also
ascertained that Bounce was, in fact, a real live animal and not, as was
recently the case in another hedgehog rescue story, a hat bobble.
In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988,
chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis
counselor. In the UK, the youth suicide charity Papyrus can be contacted on
0800 068 4141 or email pat@papyrus-uk.org, and in the UK and Ireland
Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email
jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support
service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at
befrienders.org
|
|