Former president Donald Trump and Republican candidates in key Senate races voiced support for in vitro fertilization treatment Friday, distancing themselves from a recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling that has again highlighted the electoral challenge Republicans face over their stances on abortion and other reproductive rights.<\/p>\n
The Alabama court\u2019s decision last week \u2014 that frozen embryos should be considered children and that people can be held liable for destroying them \u2014 initially was met largely with silence from Republican officeholders and candidates. But many Republican politicians have since sought to embrace IVF procedures, which have been utilized by thousands of families in the United States.<\/p>\n
Since the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s Dobbs v. Jackson Women\u2019s Health Organization ruling in 2022, which overturned the federal right to an abortion, Republicans have struggled to find a winning electoral strategy to address reproductive rights, particularly abortion. Last November, abortion rights played a role in a string of GOP losses across the country, and voters have rejected every opportunity to limit abortion care in several referendums, including in red states. Some Republicans, meanwhile, have continued to push for a federal abortion ban.<\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s expressions of support for IVF from Republicans came after the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the national group tasked with electing Republicans to the Senate, urged its candidates on the ballot this year to support IVF and reject government restrictions, citing the procedure\u2019s popularity.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen responding to the Alabama Supreme Court ruling, it is imperative that our candidates align with the public\u2019s overwhelming support for IVF and fertility treatments,\u201d NRSC Executive Director Jason Thielman wrote in a memo to \u201cSenate Candidates\u201d dated Friday and obtained by The Washington Post.<\/p>\n
Democrats have signaled that they plan to leverage the ruling in the 2024 elections. The White House and the Biden reelection campaign have placed the blame on Trump and the Supreme Court\u2019s decision. And the IVF issue is already becoming fodder for campaigns and fundraising groups.<\/p>\n
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesman David Bergstein said in a statement Friday, \u201cThe fact that the NRSC had to tell their candidates how unpopular their own agenda opposing women\u2019s reproductive freedom is speaks for itself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thielman described the Alabama ruling as \u201cfodder for Democrats hoping to manipulate the abortion issue for electoral gain\u201d and said that \u201cthere are zero Republican Senate candidates who support efforts to restrict access to fertility treatments.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNRSC encourages Republican Senate candidates to clearly and concisely reject efforts by the government to restrict IVF,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
The NRSC memo cited polling that appears to have been conducted by the firm of former Trump White House adviser Kellyanne Conway and that claimed that access to IVF is overwhelmingly popular. Much of the Republican Party for years has embraced the argument that life begins at conception, making that a cornerstone of GOP opposition to abortion. But the decision in Alabama has injected urgency into a debate that had been on the back burner.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Republican Senate candidates Bernie Moreno and Matt Dolan in Ohio, Tim Sheehy in Montana, Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania, Kari Lake in Arizona, Mike Rogers in Michigan, and Sam Brown in Nevada were among those who posted messages on social media saying they support IVF. At least one Republican running for Senate, former Maryland governor Larry Hogan, expressed support for IVF before the NRSC memo was issued.<\/p>\n
The memo did not explicitly dictate how candidates should discuss personhood and embryos \u2014 an issue at the heart of the Alabama case \u2014 and instead focused largely on messaging that emphasizes promoting the expansion of families.<\/p>\n
Still, the chair of the NRSC, Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), has co-sponsored several antiabortion bills. In 2021, he co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act, which would provide equal protection under the 14th Amendment \u201cfor the right to life of each born and preborn human person.\u201d The bill also defines \u201chuman being\u201d to \u201cinclude each member of the species homo sapiens at all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization or cloning, or other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), who is running for a Senate seat in Michigan, argued in a tweet Friday that Rogers, her possible general-election opponent, had previously co-sponsored four bills in Congress \u201cthat would have the same effect as the Alabama Supreme Court\u2019s IVF ruling.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Pennsylvania, the state Democratic Party said that \u201cMcCormick has touted his support for an abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest and praised the Dobbs decision over and over again \u2014 he can\u2019t be trusted to protect Pennsylvania women\u2019s rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
House Majority PAC, a political group dedicated to electing more Democrats to the U.S. House of Representatives, relayed in a memo Friday that House Republicans\u2019 support for the Life at Conception Act \u201cwill be used against them over paid media in competitive House districts across the country this fall.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile some House Republicans may pretend to oppose the ruling, their support tells a drastically different story,\u201d the memo said. \u201cThe fact is that ANY vulnerable House Republican who co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act supported putting IVF and fertility treatments at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump has previously said he was \u201cproud\u201d of his role in overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that protected the right to an abortion. (He appointed three justices, ensuring a conservative majority on the court.) But in a social media post Friday, he said, \u201cI strongly support the availability of IVF for couples who are trying to have a precious baby,\u201d and he subsequently called on the Alabama legislature \u201cto act quickly to find an immediate solution to preserve the availability of IVF in Alabama.\u201d He reiterated his support during a speech Friday evening in Rock Hill, S.C., ahead of Saturday\u2019s Republican presidential primary there.<\/p>\n
Even as Trump and lawmakers distanced themselves from the ruling, national and state-level antiabortion groups celebrated it, though most still indicated they were proceeding with caution.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an issue that a lot of folks have not anticipated since Dobbs and that we are grappling with,\u201d Steve Aden, chief legal counsel for the national antiabortion organization Americans United for Life, said Thursday. His group years ago drew up model legislation to limit the number of embryos created per IVF cycle, and he said he hoped state lawmakers might consider it.<\/p>\n
In a subsequent interview Friday, Aden told The Post that he wished Trump \u201cwould express a more thoughtful opinion that is based on an understanding of the IVF process and the need for respect for human life throughout it,\u201d adding: \u201cI wouldn\u2019t say I\u2019m at odds with the president\u2019s decision; I guess I\u2019m about halfway there. He needs to understand the issue more fundamentally.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ethical approach to IVF is to ensure that human lives are not wantonly created and destroyed in the process,\u201d he continued, saying that he shared Trump\u2019s hope Alabama lawmakers would act on the issue but that the legislation should express \u201crespect for life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life, wrote on X: \u201cPresident Trump, the pro-life movement recognizes what science tells us \u2014 at conception a unique, valuable human being comes into existence. We need strong families & more babies. But we need to have a convo about babies who are being killed in IVF clinics.\u201d<\/p>\n
Advocates on both sides of the issue said they were not aware of any states that were immediately poised to follow in the steps of Alabama through the courts. But the Alabama decision sparked uncertainty for fertility treatment patients and providers in that state.<\/p>\n
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall (R) \u201chas no intention of using the recent Alabama Supreme Court decision as a basis for prosecuting IVF families or providers,\u201d his chief counsel, Katherine Robertson, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Republican and Democratic lawmakers in the Alabama legislature have been working to introduce legislation protecting access to IVF following the state Supreme Court\u2019s ruling. House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels (D) filed a bill Thursday stating that a fertilized human egg or embryo outside a uterus will not be considered a person \u201cfor any purpose under state law.\u201d Sen. Tim Melson (R) has said he plans to file a bill clarifying that embryos are not viable until they are implanted inside a uterus.<\/p>\n
The Alabama ruling has led Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) to renew a call for Congress to pass a bill she introduced that would establish a statutory right to access IVF and other assisted-reproductive technology services nationwide.<\/p>\n
The White House so far has not expressed approval for Duckworth\u2019s bill. When asked whether the White House was considering policies or executive orders in response to the Alabama ruling, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the solution was to reinstitute the federal abortion protections that were overturned in 2022.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fix here is Roe v. Wade,\u201d Jean-Pierre said during Friday\u2019s press briefing. \u201cThat\u2019s how we get to a place where we fix what\u2019s going on and stop the chaos that we\u2019re seeing in these states. That\u2019s the fix. It\u2019s a legislative fix that needs to come from Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marianne LeVine, Justine McDaniel, Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, Isaac Arnsdorf and Yasmeen Abutaleb contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Former president Donald Trump and Republican candidates in key Senate races voiced support for in vitro fertilization treatment Friday, distancing themselves from a recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling that has again highlighted the electoral challenge Republicans face over their stances on abortion and other reproductive rights. The Alabama court\u2019s decision last week \u2014 that frozen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1426,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}