As Senate Democrats prepare to force a vote on protecting in vitro fertilization, one of the more common complaints from Republicans is that there’s no real need to legislate on the matter. It was just a few months ago when GOP leaders, including Donald Trump, expressed public support for IVF, so as far as Republicans are concerned, both sides are already on the same page.
If IVF is broadly popular and not in danger, the argument goes, then Democrats are engaging in a stunt for no reason.
If only it were that simple.
While it’s true that IVF enjoys broad public support — one recent poll found that a whopping 86% of Americans want the treatments to be legal — many on the right are pushing aggressively in the opposite direction. NBC News reported late yesterday:
The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, came out against in vitro fertilization at its annual meeting Wednesday. Delegates in Indianapolis voted for the resolution opposing IVF, which also urged the denomination’s members “to advocate for the government to restrain actions inconsistent with the dignity and value of every human being, which necessarily includes frozen embryonic human beings.”
A New York Times analysis added that the SBC vote was a timely reminder that “ordinary evangelicals are increasingly open to seeing embryos as people.”
Members of the nation’s most politically powerful Protestant denomination aren’t alone. It was, after all, just four months ago when the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are actual people, leading several local medical facilities to suspend their in vitro fertilization treatments.
Soon after, a great many prominent opponents of reproductive rights pressured GOP officials not to support any new IVF protections at the federal level.
In April, Politico reported that anti-abortion advocates were “laying the groundwork for a yearslong fight to curb in vitro fertilization.” Since the Alabama Supreme Court ruled last month that frozen embryos are children, the Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups have been strategizing how to convince not just GOP officials but evangelicals broadly that they should have serious moral concerns about fertility treatments like IVF and that access to them should be curtailed.
The article added that these activists on the right “want to re-run” the strategy that successfully overturned Roe v. Wade. In other words, Republicans arguing that new IVF protections aren’t necessary are either peddling false claims or are woefully uninformed. The Democratic majority in the Senate is scheduled to bring the Right to IVF Act to the floor this afternoon. If approved — a big “if,” to be sure — it would prohibit states from imposing restrictions on the treatments, while also making IVF more affordable. Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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