The GOP’s Most Panicked Reactions to Alabama’s Horrendous IVF Decision

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To the fellas in the Republican Party: Are we having fun yet with post-Dobbs reproductive rights policy? As was not unexpected after Dobbs, a state Supreme Court (Alabama’s in this case) has determined that frozen embryos have personhood rights, prompting the state’s largest hospital to halt IVF treatments for fear of legal repercussions. This is a fully insane situation. The vast majority of everyone supports access to IVF as practiced.

But—but but but!—this is the sort of outcome you will get when you enshrine into law that personhood begins at the moment of fertilization, and that’s a litmus test for many Republican candidates. And so, over the past week, we’ve seen them tripping all over their own faces trying to discuss the decision. Here’s Nikki Haley last week in her cleanup effort, fumbling, blind, for oxygen: “I didn’t say that I agreed with the Alabama ruling. What the question that I was asked is, ‘Do I believe an embryo is a baby?’ I do think that if you look in the definition, an embryo is considered an unborn baby.” In the course of a single conversation, meanwhile, Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville said he was “all for” the ruling, then said the pause on IVF treatments in Alabama was “really hard” and that we “need more kids.” Then he diverted to “I’d have to look at the entire bill, how it’s written” (what bill?) and finally landed on: “This is a state issue.” Yeah, no kidding!

Other politicians who had a hard time responding to this news included Sen. Tim Scott, who dodged the issue with a simple “Well, I haven’t studied the issue,” despite the fact that he, like Tuberville, co-sponsored Rand Paul’s 2021 “personhood bill,” which would have likely banned IVF.

Republicans in the House also had a hard time responding to the matter thanks to their own “Life at Conception Act,” which has 124 co-sponsors and no carve-out for IVF. House Rep. Nancy Mace, one of the co-sponsors, pinned a tweet declaring that she would “stop any and all efforts to ban IVF.” (The tweet comes with a contextual note from readers that clarifies that she … is a co-sponsor of an act with no carve-out for IVF.) The Democratic opposition research machine is fully whirring as campaign season rolls around. When Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers stated that he opposes “any and all efforts to restrict access to IVF—period,” his rival, Elissa Slotkin, pointed to four bills he co-sponsored that threatened IVF.

Some Republicans tried to go the more personal route. Reps. Michelle Steel and David Schweikert, both co-sponsors of the Life at Conception Act—which is still in committee and has not had a hearing—spoke of IVF helping their own families. “IVF allowed me, as it has so many others, to start my family,” Steel tweeted on Thursday. “My wife and I struggled for years to have children,” Schweikert wrote Friday. Both faced accusations of caring about reproductive freedom only as it affected them.

Other Republicans attempted to frame IVF as a pro-life issue, sometimes awkwardly. Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, speaking on Meet the Press on Sunday, tried to imitate Donald Trump, who wrote on social media, “We want to make it easier for mothers and fathers to have babies, not harder!” But what he actually managed to say was that IVF is important to couples because “it helps them breed great families.” Who doesn’t want to “breed” a great family? “Our country needs that,” he added.

The Republican party knows this is bad—to the point where the Senate Republicans’ campaign group sent a memo to its candidates on Friday instructing them to “align with the public’s overwhelming support for I.V.F. and fertility treatments.” As the memo noted, 85 percent of all respondents in the group’s polling support increased access to fertility treatments, and even 83 percent of evangelical Christians support IVF. Candidates were instructed in the memo to support IVF without equivocation and to reject “any efforts” to restrict access. It’s no wonder that Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, went out of their way in their messaging to avoid being tagged the anti-IVF party. It would be a political death knell.

But Republicans saying that they absolutely adore IVF won’t get Democrats off their case just yet. Those who say they support—want to expand, even!—access to IVF procedures as well as broadly worded legislation determining that life begins at conception are in a contradictory position. All eyes will be on the Alabama Legislature, which has promised to take action to ensure the legality of IVF procedures, to see what sort of exception it carves out. Until the Republican Party can determine that path forward, their tongues will remain tied.