Republicans’ self-inflicted IVF pain gets even worse

Republicans are in a mess of their own making and just can’t make anyone happy on abortion and in vitro fertilization. The forced-birth extremists are furious with every Republican who has publicly supported IVF, while their leader, Donald Trump, recently decreed IVF is good and should be legal. But that won’t stop Democrats from going for the GOP’s jugular on the issue.

Republicans, federal and state, are facing attacks from their onetime allies for being insufficiently pro-frozen-embryo following Alabama’s state Supreme Court declaration that said embryos are people. After Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey then signed a law to protect IVF patients and providers, one anti-abortion group referred to the law as a “license to kill” for doctors, saying that it would result in “thousands of dead human beings.” Anti-abortion groups are even running attack ads against Alabama state lawmakers who quickly passed the legislation.

Meanwhile, public opinion is overwhelmingly on the side of legal protections for IVF, as the latest Civiqs polling for Daily Kos shows.

Republicans are in such a mess over this issue that the famously anti-regulation Heritage Foundation—which is dedicated to fighting “stifling government regulation of every aspect of our lives”—is now advising GOP lawmakers to solve the problem with . . . regulations. They are pushing for new laws to “establish clear legal framework for the industry that … limits the destruction of unborn human life.” (Also known as frozen embryos.)

While the GOP twists itself up in knots, Democrats are stepping in to maximize their pain, and that starts at the top. President Joe Biden took on the issue in his State of the Union address last week. He invited an Alabama woman whose IVF treatments were canceled following the state court’s decision, and told lawmakers, “let’s stand up for families like hers. To my friends across the aisle, don’t keep this waiting any longer. Guarantee the right to IVF. Guarantee it nationwide.”

Biden followed that with a rare and forceful attack on the U.S. Supreme Court, which unleashed these attacks on reproductive freedom. “Look, [in] its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court majority wrote the following—and with all due respect, justices—‘Women are not without electoral or political power,’” Biden said, addressing the justices. “You’re about to realize just how much you were right about that.”

Reproductive rights—including access to fertility treatments and IVF—is a linchpin of the 2024 campaign. So much so that Vice President Kamala Harris is making history Thursday in St. Paul, Minnesota, by becoming the first president or vice president to visit a clinic that provides abortion services. She planned to tour the Planned Parenthood clinic and speak with staff about “how Minnesota has been impacted by extreme abortion bans in other states that threaten women’s health, force them to travel out of state to receive care, and criminalize doctors,” her office said in an advance statement.

Republicans are in trouble on IVF, and Democrats are coming for them

Here’s how you know the GOP is absolutely full of it on protecting IVF

Biden unleashes on the Supreme Court in his State of the Union speech

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