Alabama IVF ruling leaves Republicans stuck between their base and the broader public

Republicans have been forced to stake an uncomfortable position between their anti-abortion base and the wider American public, as fallout from an Alabama supreme court ruling that embryos are “extrauterine children” continues into a second week.

Meanwhile, Democrats have seized on the issue as the forewarned conclusion of decades of Republican policies to restrict reproductive rights, and pointed to contraceptives as the next frontier for restrictions.

“Republicans are in a pretty tough spot, because not only have they aligned themselves with the anti-abortion movement, but they really need the anti-abortion movement now,” said Mary Ziegler, a legal expert on the history of reproduction, and the Martin Luther King Jr professor of law at the University of California, Davis.

“They can’t win without anti-abortion base voters,” she said.

The fallout is likely to continue through the week as the US senator Tammy Duckworth seeks to force a vote on a bill to enshrine protection for IVF in federal law, a prospect that has been met with palpable Republican squirming.

In one example, when the Republican US senator Joni Ernst was asked whether she believed embryos were children, she told the Huffington Post: “I don’t want to say they’re not children.”

There has also been strong grassroots pushback. On Wednesday, families and advocates are expected to rally at the Alabama state capitol against the state supreme court ruling. The US health and human services secretary, Xavier Becerra, is expected to appear in Alabama on Tuesday evening alongside families harmed by the decision.

A growing number of Americans say they know someone who has received fertility services, and an overwhelming majority of American women say they have received