They insisted that an embryo’s stem cells represented a human with full human rights. Of course IVF is on the chopping block
This was the reason that those “fetal personhood”laws were all passed originally — to placate the extremists who would rather see actual people suffering and dying than allow embryos or fetal tissue to be used for life-saving research. Every time a Republican has been in the white house it’s been a huge controversy. IVF wasn’t discussed much on the right and when it was they turned to the far right Evangelicals who call the embryos “snowflake babies” and insist they should be adopted and implanted. (Considering how many of them there are it would obviously take a “Handmaids Tale” level of forced pregnancies to make that happen.)
Now that they got Roe overturned, the chickens have come home to roost. Here’s Greg Sargent on the GOP’s dilemma on the IVF issue:
When Donald Trump attacked the recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos should be considered children, it was widely seen as a glaring indicator of a new political reality. Trump and Republicans, analysts noted, recognize the dangers of appearing aligned against in vitro fertilization and are bolting from the decision as fast as possible.
But for a largely overlooked reason, this political morass will be harder for Republicans to extricate themselves from than they might think. This issue will continue playing out not just on the federal level but also at the level of the states, where the true implications of GOP positions on reproductive rights will be harder to evade.
Democrats are planning to make a big issue out of IVF in this year’s battle for control of state legislatures, strategists tell me. This will entail highlighting state-level bills and laws that define fetuses as people and could impact access to IVF, especially now that anti-choice activists are emboldened by the Alabama ruling.
[…]
Democrats plan to highlight the GOP push for so-called “fetal personhood bills,” which seek to enshrine full rights for fetuses on the grounds that life begins at fertilization. According to the Guttmacher Institute, proposals have been introduced in at least a dozen states, reflecting the rush of anti-abortion legislation unleashed by the U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2022 striking down abortion rights.
Many of these bills don’t have protections for IVF, says Candace Gibson, the institute’s director of state policy. Gibson notes that the implications of these proposals for IVF remain murky, as this is largely uncharted legal territory. But she says the Alabama ruling could galvanize some anti-choice activists to push a fetal personhood agenda “even more aggressively.”
The Alabama ruling revolved largely around language in the state constitution. But as The New Republic’s Matt Ford has explained, it demonstrates that the logic of fetal rights leads fairly straightforwardly to prohibitions on IVF, making it a highly significant moment for the fetal personhood movement’s pursuit of state-level legislation.
People have been warning that these “fetal personhood” bills inevitably lead to banning IVF and ultimately surveillance of pregnant women for “suspicious” miscarriages if Roe was overturned. It is the logical consequence of banning abortion.
Think about it. These people have been outlawing stem cell research with embryos successfully going back decades because they say that it’s killing a child That’s the basis for “fetal personhood” bills in the congress and around the country. How on earth can they now say that IVF should be exempt but life-saving research isn’t?
These anti-abortion zealots have always been extremists. They been terrorists, fergwdsakes, blowing up clinics and assassinating doctors! Sure, they can be pragmatic for the sake of their crusade but they aren’t giving it up. They know they need Trump in the White House so they may back off of a national ban until he gets back in but they’ll keep pressuring the state houses. And they’ll keep electing judges like those in Alabama who made their decision for religious not constitutional reasons.
I’m not saying that Alito and Gorsuch and Kavanaugh and the rest of the sadistic six can’t dance on the head of a pin to find some illogical reason why IVF is different than stem cell research or miscarriage and therefore should be exempt, but it will obviously be fallacious. The fact is that if an embryo is considered a person with full human rights in one situation it has to be considered a full human being in all situations and there are few people in this country who agree with any of that, even among the fetal crusaders. And that’s because it doesn’t meet any real world test that most of us have to face in one way or another.
As of right now, there are 14 states with pending Fetal Personhood Bills. The proposed federal Life At Conception Act, was co-sponsored by 125 House Republicans. There’s no carve out for IVF in their bill.