Republicans scrambling to keep up with Democrats and the corporate media fearmongering on the national embryo debate are largely supportive of in vitro fertilization with limitations. The problem is that rational restrictions on reproductive technologies, known for being a moral and ethical minefield, won’t satisfy a party of radicals.
House Republicans introduced a resolution last month claiming to recognize “the fundamental truth that life is precious” but affirming support for IVF as long as it includes “commonsense policies that enable families to grow and thrive.” Republicans like Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith often cite Louisiana as an example of these “common-sense” restrictions.
The Pelican State’s 1986 law classifies a “viable in vitro fertilized human ovum” as a “juridical person which shall not be intentionally destroyed by any natural or other juridical person or through the actions of any other such person.”
But even that so-called “narrow” rule still allows fertility facilities to destroy an embryo as long as it “fails to develop further over a thirty-six hour period,” is deemed nonviable, or is stored out of state, something a majority of Louisiana’s IVF industry opts to do. It also does nothing to prevent ethically questionable procedures like genetic testing, cryopreservation (which hurts an embryo’s survival chances), and the rapidly developing radical reproductive technologies that threaten to hit the fertility markets in the near future.
At the end of the day, the Louisiana law does little to address the ethical and moral concerns about assisted reproductive technology (ART).
Yet, despite its laxities and shortcomings, which allow IVF in the state to flourish, the law still does not satiate Democrats or their allies in the corporate media who believe the value of an unborn human’s right to life hinges on how wanted they are.
The same can be said for Alabama. Following the state Supreme Court’s ruling allowing embryos to fit requirements for suit under the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, the Alabama legislature rushed to pass bills aimed at granting civil and criminal immunity to the state’s fertility industry. On Tuesday, Axios, unsatisfied with the knee-jerk protections for IVF facilities, published an article calling the legislation a “‘Band-Aid’ to explosive court ruling.”
Remember Who The Radicals Are
The heart of the issue for Democrats and their allies in the corporate media is that legally protecting life in its most vulnerable form stops them from enacting their extremist agendas when it comes to both the baby-making industry and the baby-taking industry.
When outlets like NBC News and Axios complain that an “uptick in state personhood bills” in at least 14 states could keep people from buying their way into parenthood, the outlets are actually worried about the codification of the scientific and moral agreement that life begins at conception. This is evident by their very public effort to inexplicably link their abortion advocacy to the IVF conversation.
“Prior to the 2022 Dobbs ruling, personhood efforts were in large part designed to chip away at abortion rights,” NBC claimed.
They insist that the serial creation of embryos, most of which will be frozen, discarded, or dismembered for “research purposes,” is necessary to produce a child.
“Republicans want to force women to stay pregnant against their will while also preventing women who want to get pregnant from doing so,” Rep. Lois Frankel told Politico for the publication’s article on the IVF debate in Florida.
The Democratic Women’s Caucus chair and her allies at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, who similarly accused Republicans of showing “blatant disrespect for women and families,” want you to believe that it’s conservatives who are the radicals when it comes to unborn babies. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The pro-life position on embryos hasn’t and shouldn’t change from valuing the sanctity of life starting at its microscopic fertilization regardless of the circumstances of its creation. Democrats’ position on both abortion and ART, however, has quickly developed into a drastic and extreme one that elevates profit and convenience at the expense of women’s and children’s safety and lives.
On IVF, Democrats tout legislation that would not only guarantee the unlimited creation and destruction of embryos in all 50 states but also punish anyone who tries to “unduly restrict access” to ART. They don’t just want to protect the manufacturing of motherless and fatherless children, commercial surrogacy, experimental transhumanist technologies like artificial wombs, and “gene editing,” but they want American taxpayers, even those with religious objections to ART, to foot the bill.
On abortion, Democrats across the country have made abortion through all nine months of pregnancy a hallmark of their legislative agendas. They disregard voters’ feelings to vote for bills that would permit women to have an abortion at any point in pregnancy “regardless of their circumstances and without interference and discrimination.” A majority of them don’t even want protections for babies who, despite being born alive and breathing, still face execution by abortionists outside of the womb.
The New Yorker is right. The “Fight Over I.V.F. Is Only Beginning” because, at its heart, it’s not really an ART fight. It’s a fight about the inherent value of a life.
