Republicans’ complicated relationship with IVF
Senators are back on Capitol Hill for the first time since the Alabama Supreme Court ruled last week that frozen embryos are children and people can be liable for discarding or destroying them.
Republicans, urged by the National Republican Senatorial Committee to back in vitro fertilization, expressed support Monday for the procedure. But they were harder to pin down on a sticky question raised by the Alabama ruling: What should be done with the many unused embryos created in the process?
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) acknowledged he got “lambasted” last week for telling a reporter that he was “all for” the court’s decision, while in the same breath saying people “need to have more kids.”
Tuberville said he has since done his research and maintained that everyone should have the “opportunity” to have a child. He noted that five of the eight IVF clinics in Alabama remain open. However, he dodged questions about the court decision.
“There’s a lot of experimentation, you know, with embryos, and they’re trying to get to the bottom of how do we do this the right way,” he said, without clarifying who “they” is. Tuberville added that the Alabama legislature plans to vote on a bill to protect IVF.
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), an OB/GYN, called IVF “a miracle.” But when asked whether unused embryos should be destroyed - the central issue in the Alabama case - he demurred.
“The great thing about the Dobbs decision is that puts the power back into ‘We the People’ and the legislature there needs to address the situation,” Marshall said, adding that he “fully supports” IVF in Kansas.
In vitro fertilization, which is enormously popular, is more often used by college-educated women – a voter demographic Republicans need in 2024, especially if they want to keep control of the House. Ever since the Supreme Court struck down the federal right to an abortion, Republicans have struggled to coalesce around positions on reproductive rights issues.
Since the Alabama ruling, which has so far resulted in the closure of nearly half the state’s IVF clinics, Democrats have been quick to point out Republicans’ history of signing on to anti-IVF legislation.
In 2021, before the overturn of Roe v. Wade, 166 of 215 House Republicans backed a bill by Rep. Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.) that defined personhood at the moment of conception, with no protection for IVF.
Seven of the nine Republicans in the House at the time who represented districts that President Biden won in 2020 supported the bill. (Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Young Kim of California did not.)
But two years later, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe and Democrats successfully ran on abortion in the midterms, fewer Republicans - 125 - backed a new version of the bill.
Reps. Don Bacon (Neb.), Mike Garcia (Calif.), David G. Valadao (Calif.) and David Schweikert (Ariz.) did not sign on to it. Twelve freshman Republicans elected to Biden districts didn’t sign on either. The only Republican in a Biden district who signed on in 2023 was Rep. Michelle Steel (Calif.), who also supported it in 2021.
Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.), who signed on to the Life at Conception Act as a House member last Congress, said he supports both IVF and the belief that life begins at conception. However, he said “there are other complexities” when asked what to do with unused frozen embryos.
Emma Waters, a research associate at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, warned last year that there was “no such thing as a ‘fundamental right’ to a child per se, and it certainly can’t be invoked to trump the basic rights of others.”
The issue of IVF is playing a role in the stalemate over government funding bills, even as a partial government shutdown looms at the end of the week. One sticking point had been a policy in the military construction-veterans affairs bill in which Democrats wanted to expand access to fertility treatments, including IVF.
Democrats are also seizing the moment to push forward on stand-alone legislation protecting IVF. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) will push for her bill to move forward this week.
She had both of her children via IVF but says she wasted years after going to a doctor she didn’t realize was known for counseling against IVF for religious reasons, and she has been warning about efforts to restrict IVF since the 2018 nomination of Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
“If a fertilized egg is a person, then you run into all sorts of risks in terms of birth control. IUDs would become illegal. Many fertility treatments would become illegal,” she said at the time.
Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.), who is running for reelection in a district Biden barely won in 2020, reintroduced the House version of the bill last month. It has drawn more than 30 Democratic co-sponsors since the Alabama ruling, including Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), who is running for Senate in a competitive race. Wild is set to hold a news conference with several new co-sponsors on Thursday.
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