Religious conservatives are coming out hot against IVF. Trump is in trouble

On Wednesday, the day before former president Donald Trump paid a visit to Capitol Hill, Senators Katie Britt of Alabama and Ted Cruz of Texas were on the floor debating their legislation to protect access to IVF.

The two Republicans — one a rising star in the party who is the youngest female Senator, the other a firebrand conservative who is trying to rebrand himself as a consensus builder as Texas gets purpler — proposed the legislation in response to Democrats teeing up their own vote on legislation. Cruz and Britt were trying to make the argument that Republicans like them aren’t against the fertility treatment, all while avoiding voting for a Democrat-led law.

But just as Britt and Cruz were speaking, the Southern Baptist Convention voted on a resolution that denounced IVF. Their denunciation was based on the practice — normal during IVF treatment — of creating multiple embryos that could be potentially used in the future but many of which could be destroyed.

Democrats only began talking about IVF after an Alabama Supreme Court ruling classified frozen embryos as children under state law. That Alabama ruling mentioned Dobbs v Jackson, the US Supreme Court ruling that killed Roe v Wade, which came because of Supreme Court justices that Trump nominated and Cruz voted to confirm.

The whole episode shows how almost two years after the Dobbs case, Republicans have still not figured out how to talk about abortion — and there are few signs they will figure it out soon.

As Inside Washington reported on Thursday, Trump talked with congressional Republicans about abortion when he appeared on Capitol Hill, but only spoke in platitudes. Representative Nancy Mace, a pro-Trump Republican, said that Trump talked about