CSI 6x06, some random fannish stuff
So I thought I might try to be productive and finally get my AU recs page updated, opened the the folder where I bookmark the stories I plan to rec, saw just how many had accumulated since I last updated early last year (meep! it has been this long already?!), and was promptly discouraged by overwhelming numbers. Especially since I couldn't even fully remember some of the stories I bookmarked. I think before my next attempt I need to limit myself to some reasonable number of recs I'm going to add and slowly whittle down the pile. Anyway, instead of starting that, I watched the latest CSI episode, 6x06 Secrets and Flies.
My main reaction to the murder case was that it all felt very weird and contrived to me, I mean more so even than the usual CSI cases, but I at first I couldn't quite pin down what caused this. I finally came to the conclusion that it was because reproductive medicine is legislated very differently here, so the whole setup that lead to the murder would be completely impossible here, and on top of that I found this religious organization of fundamentalist Christians that arranged for the mother to get this embryo in the first place quite alien too (despite the fact that their, IMO slightly whacky, definition of when life begins in fact more or less coincides with the law here). So somehow everything seemed surreal to me.
I mean here the law forbids the practice of surrogate mothers, and in the case that someone might be illegally doing this, the woman who gave birth to the child counts as legal mother regardless of who contributed the egg. There's also an "embryo protection law" (since 1990) which forbids storing frozen embryos, they have to be frozen before the sperm merged fully with the egg, because embryos here are protected as "life" from that moment onwards, so the situation that people donate full embryos that are left over from IVF to other couples doesn't arise in the first place. Obviously that embryo protection law also forbids any medicinal research utilizing human embryos, including all stem-cell research, though some would like to change that and loosen it a bit.
So before I watched this episode it actually had never occurred to me that in the US the more permissive laws would lead to organizations trying to sort of "rescue" leftover embryos. Somehow it all felt vaguely science fiction like to me, though I obviously know it's not. I don't really think about embryos or reproductive medicine a lot, but this embryo protection policy has been law here since 1990 or so, and in general the whole legislation surrounding reproductive technology and medicine is organized around the principle to "protect unborn life" with embryos counting as such, and no matter how bizarre I find it to protect a lump of cells right from fertilization, it's what I've been used to as more or less "normal mainstream" my whole adult life. Though at least here it doesn't come attached with religious zealots en masse, who then go on to picket abortion clinics or something like that (not that I'm aware of anyway). Though this official pro-life view also leads to the somewhat strange way abortion is allowed here, since it is actually "unlawful" in general but merely not punished in the first three months, as long as the woman sought council before the abortion, making it de-facto legal but not really. Well, at least with the reunification we got closer to a real pro-choice law, since at least the decision is now up to the woman, you just have to get counseled, whereas in West Germany you needed to convince them that your situation really warranted an abortion as limited by the law.
Anyway, I found that whole case very strange. OTOH I thought the B-plot with Grissom bringing down his corrupted colleague was very cool. I also liked how he used the favor the sheriff offered him to get those benefits for his team even though he was still behind with his paperwork.
I also got the Revenge of the Sith DVD (I haven't watched any extras or rewatched the movie yet, though), and the new Dykes To Watch Out For collection, i.e. Invasion of the DTWOF, arrived from Amazon. I read the comic strip online,but it is always nice to have them finally in a collection on paper, and the books have new extra material too. So: *squee!*
My main reaction to the murder case was that it all felt very weird and contrived to me, I mean more so even than the usual CSI cases, but I at first I couldn't quite pin down what caused this. I finally came to the conclusion that it was because reproductive medicine is legislated very differently here, so the whole setup that lead to the murder would be completely impossible here, and on top of that I found this religious organization of fundamentalist Christians that arranged for the mother to get this embryo in the first place quite alien too (despite the fact that their, IMO slightly whacky, definition of when life begins in fact more or less coincides with the law here). So somehow everything seemed surreal to me.
I mean here the law forbids the practice of surrogate mothers, and in the case that someone might be illegally doing this, the woman who gave birth to the child counts as legal mother regardless of who contributed the egg. There's also an "embryo protection law" (since 1990) which forbids storing frozen embryos, they have to be frozen before the sperm merged fully with the egg, because embryos here are protected as "life" from that moment onwards, so the situation that people donate full embryos that are left over from IVF to other couples doesn't arise in the first place. Obviously that embryo protection law also forbids any medicinal research utilizing human embryos, including all stem-cell research, though some would like to change that and loosen it a bit.
So before I watched this episode it actually had never occurred to me that in the US the more permissive laws would lead to organizations trying to sort of "rescue" leftover embryos. Somehow it all felt vaguely science fiction like to me, though I obviously know it's not. I don't really think about embryos or reproductive medicine a lot, but this embryo protection policy has been law here since 1990 or so, and in general the whole legislation surrounding reproductive technology and medicine is organized around the principle to "protect unborn life" with embryos counting as such, and no matter how bizarre I find it to protect a lump of cells right from fertilization, it's what I've been used to as more or less "normal mainstream" my whole adult life. Though at least here it doesn't come attached with religious zealots en masse, who then go on to picket abortion clinics or something like that (not that I'm aware of anyway). Though this official pro-life view also leads to the somewhat strange way abortion is allowed here, since it is actually "unlawful" in general but merely not punished in the first three months, as long as the woman sought council before the abortion, making it de-facto legal but not really. Well, at least with the reunification we got closer to a real pro-choice law, since at least the decision is now up to the woman, you just have to get counseled, whereas in West Germany you needed to convince them that your situation really warranted an abortion as limited by the law.
Anyway, I found that whole case very strange. OTOH I thought the B-plot with Grissom bringing down his corrupted colleague was very cool. I also liked how he used the favor the sheriff offered him to get those benefits for his team even though he was still behind with his paperwork.
I also got the Revenge of the Sith DVD (I haven't watched any extras or rewatched the movie yet, though), and the new Dykes To Watch Out For collection, i.e. Invasion of the DTWOF, arrived from Amazon. I read the comic strip online,but it is always nice to have them finally in a collection on paper, and the books have new extra material too. So: *squee!*