“Even before birth, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory,” Chief Justice Tom Parker wrote.

That's how it looks to me.

They don’t care what it wants. They care how they can frame what they want to seem like what it wants. What they want is pretty clearly spelled out here: more babies.

Oppressive theist group argues amongst itself about wha their imaginary friend in the sky wants.

Maybe they could exclusively focus on that for a while and get back to us if they ever come to an agreement on whose religion is the only correct one?

Meanwhile the rest of us could get on with the business of progressing society without their constant interference.

They could have put in exceptions for IVF from the get-go but they didn't, because they are more interested in winning points than writing effective legislation.

You can't square that circle. If you codify your religious myth that "life begins at conception" into law in order to ban abortions, then you also have to outlaw IVF by the very nature of the procedure.

But they do want to outlaw it. They just didn't want everyone to know until AFTER the election. That way no one could do anything to stop it.

That statement is rather ambiguous as it could be read to mean it's unfortunate that theology can't impact lawmaking, or that it's unfortunate that theology is impacting lawmaking. Theology shouldn't impact lawmaking and the fact that it is is the problem. Republicans have been steadily chipping away at separation of church and state for decades now and we're seeing the impact.

Any hint that a lawmaker is letting religious beliefs dictate their legislation should be an automatic disqualification from office. Politicians shouldn't even be allowed to mention their religion while campaigning. Instead it's becoming de rigueur for politicians to affirm their faith on a regular basis, and we regularly have politicians citing religious beliefs in debates about legislation.

The only part of your comment that I disagree with is "unfortunately".

Knowing multiple people who have gone through IVF procedures, and have had it fail time and time again, i felt that as well. They were heartbroken, time and time again.

One lf them has a child on the way, and the other has stopped trying, for those who wonder :)

It's really this simple. The bible says "Be fruitful and multiply"

A bunch of white people in the united states are worried about birth rates because immigrant birth rates are high whereas white birth rates are on the decline. They're worried about white people becoming a minority because even though if you asked them they would say no, they know that minorities are treated poorly here.

Because a man in a book said something about going forth and multiplying

What they ~~could~~ will go after next:

They already are. And have been for a very long time.

Would that be the same guy who had trouble grasping the concept of "you don't actually need to swear on a bible" live on air?

As a progressive in Texas...fuckin YEAH. Some of us are trying to bring reality back and it's really annoying to get lumped in with the crazies.