Alabama Ruled Frozen Embryos Are Children — Now What?–Frozen embryos are children under Alabama law, the state’s Supreme Court ruled Friday in a decision that could have a huge impact on fertility treatments in the state. Burdick-Aysenne v. Center for Reproductive Medicine is a pair of consolidated wrongful-death cases brought by three couples whose frozen embryos were destroyed in an accident at a fertility clinic. The Republican-controlled court based its ruling in the case partially on the Alabama Constitution’s anti-abortion language, which was amended in 2018 to say that it’s the “policy of this state to ensure the protection of the rights of the unborn child.” The justices ruled that under the state’s 1872 Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, “unborn children” are children “without exception based on developmental stage, physical location, or any other ancillary characteristics.” www.thecut.com
Give Me Propaganda or Give Me Death–A week later, I spend a night erasing the past year from my life—a year of running through Europe as if through a maze. I clear my chats in Telegram and unsubscribe from channels that cover the war. I wipe my browser history, delete my VPN apps, remove the rainbow strap on my watch, and tear the Ukrainian flag sticker from my jacket. The next day—March 29, 2023—I fly to Tallinn, Estonia, and ride a half-empty bus through a deep forest to the Russian border. The checkpoint sits at a bridge over the Narva River, between two late-medieval castles. German shepherds keep watch, and an armed soldier patrols the river by boat. www.wired.com
The moral risks of fandom–As we understand it, sports fandom is a form of love. Fans of sports teams care passionately about their teams in similar ways to how lovers care about each other. They want their team to succeed, in much the same way that lovers want each other’s lives to go well. Just as a lover may spend much of their time thinking about their loved one, so do sports fans spend large parts of their lives thinking about their teams – which players they should select, which formation they should deploy, and so on. Just as a lover may be particularly well attuned to their loved one’s qualities, so too are sports fans especially well placed to recognise what it is that makes their team so special. Both lovers and sports fans are also likely to view the object of their love through rose-tinted glasses, leading them to an overly positive view of these qualities. aeon.co
How First Contact With Whale Civilization Could Unfold–This would be a first-contact scenario involving two species that have lived side by side for ages. I wanted to imagine how it could unfold. I reached out to marine biologists, field scientists who specialize in whales, paleontologists, professors of animal-rights law, linguists, and philosophers. Assume that Project CETI works, I told them. Assume that we are able to communicate something of substance to the sperm whale civilization. What should we say? www.theatlantic.com
Is Philosophy Self-Help?–Asking a professor of moral philosophy for life advice can seem quixotic, like asking an expert on the mind-body problem to perform brain surgery. Philosophy is an abstract field of argument and theory: this is true as much of ethics as it is of metaphysics. Why should reflection in this vein—ruthless, complex, conceptual—make us happier, more well-adjusted people? (If you’ve spent time with philosophers, you may doubt that it has such salutary effects.) And why should philosophers want to join the self-help movement, anyway? thepointmag.com
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