The Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling that a frozen embryo— or even a smudge in a Petri dish— is a child, has caused freakout in the GOP. Americans, including conservative Alabamans, do not go for this— not at all. Trump and MAGA Mike both denounced it (although MAGA Mike is a cosponsor of a bill to eliminate it. Other Republicans rushed to follow suit. And yet… 125 House Republicans are sponsoring Alex Mooney’s crackpot bill— the Life at Conception Act (H.R. 431)— that goes even further than the nuts on the Alabama Supreme Court! The official bill summary: “This bill declares that the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution is vested in each human being at all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization, cloning, or other moment at which an individual comes into being.”
And the Republicans behind it aren’t just the lunatic fringe of the party. Sure, you have the menagerie freak show of Marjorie Traitor Greene (GA), Scott Perry (PA), Andy Biggs (AZ), Clay Higgins (LA), Eli Crane (AZ), Ronny Jackson (TX), Thomas Massie (KY), Bob Good (VA), Matt Rosendle (MT), Andrew Clyde (GA), Lauren Boebert (CO), Tim Burchett (TN), Andy Ogles (TN)… but you also have MAGA Mike (LA) and some members who pretend to be vaguely mainstream to keep their seats, like Tony Gonzales (TX), Ashley Hinson (IA), Mike Gallagher (WI), Lloyd Smucker (PA), Brian Mast (FL), Dusty Johnson (SD), Michelle Steel (CA), Tom Cole (OK), Mike Carey (OH), Troy Balderson (OH)…
Jerrad Christian is a progressive Democrat running for an Ohio congressional seat held by knee-jerk anti-Choice fanatic, Troy Balderson. You can contribute to his campaign here. This morning he told me that “As someone who believes in individual liberty, the recent Alabama IVF incident strikes a chord. The Alabama Supreme Court's decision to classify frozen embryos as ‘children’ presents a concerning precedent for reproductive rights— including the right to try to conceive a child. This ruling highlights the potential for significant restrictions on fertility treatments while showing the true desire of the extreme right— to reach into our personal lives and dictate deeply personal choices. This intrusion not only undermines the autonomy of individuals seeking to start families through IVF, but it also signals a broader attempt to control aspects of reproductive health and personal decisions. Such developments underscore the importance of vigilantly defending individual liberties against encroaching restrictions that compromise the freedom to make private and personal health decisions. My opponent sponsored a life at conception bill at the federal level last year, which shows these people never cared about allowing states to decide, unless the states agreed with them to begin with.”
There have probably been some fiery progressives representing working families in Orange County somewhere along the line but I’m convinced that if Cheyenne Hunt is elected, no one from there will ever compare. She’s running for the seat held by Trump-lovin’ Michelle Steel (and there are 2 GOP-light Democrats on the ballot as well). “While my opponent likes to pretend she's a MAGA ‘moderate,’ it turns out that there are no moderates in the war against women. Steel claims to be supportive of limited exceptions to a national abortion ban including in the cases of rape, incest, and the life of the mother. She also claims to be supportive of IVF fertility treatment. However, Steel co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act which would ban abortion nationwide with no exceptions and would not allow for access to IVF treatment. Steel has even publicly admitted to exercising her own reproductive choices to utilize IVF treatments herself, yet has signed on to legislation that would deprive millions of women across the country of that same right. This means either one of two things is true: 1) Steel did not read or understand the text of the bill she introduced or 2) She is lying about her record and backtracking on her radical positions because it turns out that they are wildly unpopular. Either way, we deserve better from our Representatives.”
Yesterday, Annie Karni reported on the anger among voters over the GOP position on IVF. She talked about a different bill, though, one Democrat Kathy Manning introduced— and passed— to protect contraception that was opposed by all Republicans but 8. [Note: of the 8 Republicans who voted with the Democrats to pass it, 5 are no longer in Congress: Liz Cheney, Anthony Gonzalez, John Katko, Adam Kinzinger and Fred Upton, and one, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, is on the verge of being committed to an insane asylum.] “A new national poll conducted by Americans for Contraception and obtained by the New York Times found that most voters across the political spectrum believe their access to birth control is actively at risk, and that 80 percent of voters said that protecting access to contraception was ‘deeply important’ to them. Even among Republican voters, 72 percent said they had a favorable view of birth control. When voters were told that 195 House Republicans had voted against the Right to Contraception Act, 64 percent of them said they would be less likely to support Republican candidates for Congress, according to the poll. And overall, the issue of protecting access to contraception bolstered voters’ preference for Democrats by nine points, giving them a 12-point edge over Republicans, up from three. The survey found that birth control access was especially motivating to critical groups in the Democratic coalition, including Black voters and young people, who are currently less enthusiastic about the election.”
It is the latest bit of politically rocky terrain that Republicans have had to walk on issues of reproductive health since the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which has made real to voters the threat that other rights could be next to go. According to the new poll, three out of five voters living in states where abortion has been banned or restricted said they were concerned that contraception is next.
[Impact Research’s Molly] Murphy said Republicans’ reaction to the Alabama ruling indicated that they know they have a political crisis on their hands.
“The reason they’re having to come out against this is because they know that it isn’t plausible for voters to believe it was just a court in Alabama, but more of a representation of what this entire party stands for,” Murphy said. “If they thought this was an outlier ruling from a rogue court in the South and they didn’t have to say anything, they wouldn’t be saying anything. This is damage control.”
It will be the second national election cycle in which Republicans face a bind of their own making as they try to reconcile their party’s hard-line policies on women’s health— based on a fealty to a conservative religious doctrine— with a vast majority of the country that now views the issue differently.
A majority of voters support the Right to Contraception Act across party, racial and gender lines, according to the poll. About 94 percent of Democrats support it, and 68 percent of Republican voters favor it.
But when the proposal came before the House, Republicans balked. Many of them claimed that they supported contraception in practice but considered the bill a gateway to allowing abortion. They argued that the bill’s definition of contraceptives could be interpreted to include pills that induce abortion.
“The Republican Party has so underestimated the way the country has changed,” said Karen Finney, a longtime abortion rights activist. “This is part of the deal they made with very far-right conservatives who are unbending on these issues. There are Republicans who recognize the damage it could do to their base of support if they were to modify in any direction.”
