‘A Quandary’: Republicans Hesitant To Back Federal Protections For IVF

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans are struggling to respond to an extreme Alabama Supreme Court ruling effectively halting in vitro fertilization in the state as Democrats plan a new effort this week to protect access to IVF and other fertility treatments nationwide.

On the one hand, Republicans maintain that they support the continued use of IVF, calling it both pro-family and pro-life. But on the other hand, many in the GOP agree with the central premise of the ruling that found that frozen embryos are children with equal rights, a contradictory position that now has them on the defensive on an issue that is supported by over 80% of Americans, including a majority of Republicans.

“That’s really at the crux of the ethics of it,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) told reporters on Tuesday. “How do our laws recognize the dignity of human life but also understand that the procedure that it enables is a life-creating procedure?”

“No one has IVF to destroy life, they have IVF to create life,” he added. “Unfortunately, you have to create multiple embryos, and some of those are not used, then you’re now in a quandary.”

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said she supported access to IVF. When asked if she considered frozen embryos children, she said, “I don’t want to say they’re not children.”

The Alabama Supreme Court released a decision earlier this month that grants embryos the same legal rights as children. The ruling set IVF patients and providers in the state into a tailspin , with three of the largest fertility clinics announcing that they paused IVF services to avoid legal risk in the wake of the decision.

The decision centered on a 2020 lawsuit in which three couples sued an Alabama fertility clinic for the “wrongful death” of their