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
