IVF is already showing up in some races. Democrats are trying to tie it to abortion, as Republicans try to separate the two issues.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer speaks about a bill to establish federal protections for IVF during a press event on Capitol Hill, on Feb. 27, 2024. | Francis Chung/POLITICO
A Michigan Democratic candidate is warning that the GOP will “roll back” the use of in-vitro fertilization. An Iowa Democrat is using her own IVF story as a contrast with her opponent’s past support for limits on it. And a Florida Republican is pushing symbolic pro-IVF legislation.
The Alabama Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law catapulted IVF into the political spotlight, ripping open another potential weakness for Republicans on reproductive rights. IVF is already showing up in campaign ads and messaging in multiple states, including those potentially competitive congressional seats in Michigan, Iowa and Florida. The issue has even reached further down-ballot, including an Alabama state House special election on Tuesday that a Democrat won after casting IVF as a preeminent issue alongside abortion.
But for now, IVF has yet to dominate the political airwaves the way that abortion rights did after the reversal of Roe v. Wade.
Whether that remains true as the parties edge closer to November depends on how well Republicans can navigate tricky conversations about IVF — and if Democrats can successfully tie the fertility technology to broader reproductive rights. (It’s also early in the cycle, with the real cross-party fighting coming after the primaries.) As both parties search for every advantage in the fight for control of Congress, the legal battles over personhood that Roe’s fall kickstarted on the state level are giving Democrats an opportunity to connect the Alabama ruling to the broader loss of a national right to abortion.
And it doesn’t help that Republicans are still scrambling to apply the lessons they learned on abortion, with many admitting they lack a clear position on IVF beyond general support for it. Democrats are starting to remind voters more strongly that their opponents don’t yet have straightforward answers for more complicated questions, such as how to treat frozen embryos.
“You just cannot have that both ways,” said Democrat Christina Bohannan, who is looking for a rematch with Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks in Iowa’s 1st Congressional District. “You can’t claim to support life at conception and personhood bills, and then also claim to support something like IVF, and that really is the problem.”
And Democrats are determined to closely tie the recent Alabama ruling to general reproductive rights — familiar ground for the party that championed abortion rights over the last two years, leading to wins in purple and red areas.
“They’re trying to make a mountain out of a molehill,” said Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), who is running for governor this year. Braun said he hasn’t talked to any Republicans who would be in favor of ending IVF, and he thinks Democratic attempts to pin Republicans as anti-IVF will “fall flat.”
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who is up for reelection in the fall, told POLITICO it’s important to address IVF and abortion as “different issues.”
“I just think as somebody who’s 100 percent pro-life, I’m 100 percent for IVF. I know people — personally, a lot of people — who have benefited from IVF,” Hawley said. “It’s a miracle for many, many families.”
Reproductive rights messaging proved beneficial on Tuesday, when Democrat Marilyn Lands prevailed in a competitive special election for a Alabama state House swing seat — right where this all started. (The legislature has since passed a law restoring access to IVF.) Lands defeated Republican Teddy Powell after putting reproductive rights in the forefront of her campaign.
In a campaign ad, she highlighted an Alabama woman’s inability to get an abortion due to the state’s ban, and shared her own experience with abortion. One of the headlines flashing on screen refers to the state court’s IVF ruling.
“I feel like Alabama is Ground Zero for attacks on women’s freedoms and reproductive health care issues,” Lands said in an interview prior to the election.
It’s a comeback for Lands, who ran for the seat in 2022 but lost by 7 points. In 2020, former President Donald Trump narrowly won this district, and former Democratic Sen. Doug Jones won it by around 5 points.
A low-turnout special election in a state that won’t get much attention come November, months before the fight for Congress really heats up, is not the strongest indicator of how IVF will play out in more high-profile races this cycle. But Lands’ win may help set the tone for Democrats moving forward. President Joe Biden’s campaign seized on the victory, saying the “results should serve as a major warning sign for Trump.”
An ad in Michigan uses IVF as an issue more directly. Jessica Swartz, a Democrat running in a Trump-won district, talks in the ad about using IVF to get pregnant and points to Republican Rep. Bill Huizenga’s support for a bill that states life begins at conception.
That so-called personhood legislation, the Life at Conception Act, does not have a carve-out for IVF. If enacted, advocacy and medical groups say the bill could upend how the procedure is practiced. It has more than 100 House GOP cosponsors but has not come up for a vote.
Bohannan has been running advertisements on social media sharing her experience with IVF and pointing to Miller-Meeks’ backing of legislation that restricts access to the procedure. Trump also narrowly won that district in 2020.
“It made me very angry to think that people who are already struggling with infertility and with the emotional stress of [IVF] would then have politicians tell them, ‘This is not even an option for you,’” Bohannan said.
There’s some evidence that congressional Republicans are worried. Rep. Michelle Steel (R-Calif.), whose seat is a top target for House Democrats, pulled her backing of the Life at Conception Act after the Alabama ruling, saying that she does not support federal restrictions on IVF.
The House GOP is further impacted by the fact it hasn’t voted on any new pro-IVF legislation recently — which isn’t likely to change anytime soon. Senate Democrats tried to unanimously pass a bill to protect IVF at the federal level, but Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) blocked it.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) told POLITICO in early March she’s still pursuing a roll-call vote on her bill, though Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) indicated she doesn’t expect a floor vote until Senate Republicans commit to not filibustering it.
Some Republicans are trying to introduce their own legislation, though GOP leadership hasn’t indicated whether any will get a vote. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) earlier this month released a bill that would make states ineligible for maternal and child health services funding if they ban IVF.
But Democratic challenger Whitney Fox, who has been hitting Luna on IVF for weeks, said the bill “does nothing to protect what happened in Alabama from happening right here in Florida” and accused Luna of introducing the bill to get “attention so she can claim that she’s protecting it.”
“I think voters see it as: They went after Roe. They went after abortion rights. And now, they’re going after IVF. What’s next, birth control? I mean, how far does this go? And I think it’s terrifying people that it’s come to this, that their rights are being taken away,” Fox said.
Absent legislative solutions, both sides are left to tool with messaging. First-term Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) has urged her party to clearly state its support for IVF, calling National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Steve Daines (R-Mont.) after her state’s ruling and telling him the GOP should immediately get ahead of backlash, according to a person familiar with the conversation.
The NRSC subsequently released a memo advising candidates to voice support for IVF.
“I support IVF. I have many friends who that’s the reason they’re here,” GOP Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake said during a visit to the Capitol this month. Lake also noted she’s “much more about keeping a lot of this to the states.”
The messaging isn’t always clean-cut, however. In Maryland, Republican Senate hopeful Larry Hogan, the former governor of the state, earlier this month would not commit to voting for federal protections for IVF while voicing his support of the procedure. A day later, he slammed “gotcha questions, litmus tests, and hypotheticals” and said that he would sponsor legislation protecting the procedure.
Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, a Democrat running for that seat, has hit Hogan on his reproductive rights record, including his 2022 veto of a bill in the state that would have expanded abortion access.
“This is reproductive freedom,” Alsobrooks said. “How paternalistic and crazy has this discussion become that anybody ought to be able to decide for a woman which things she can do for her body?”
Source: Politico