On paper, there appears to be a strong coalition of Republicans in the Senate who believe unborn life from the moment it begins is precious and worthy of protection.
These GOP politicians don’t simply self-identify as pro-life on and off the campaign trail. All except three of them (Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, and Susan Collins) also wear generous A+ ratings from abortion-fighting organizations such as SBA Pro-Life America, which purports to evaluate which elected officials are truly serious about safeguarding the unborn.
Given almost all of the upper chamber Republicans’ seemingly airtight reputations when it comes to the sanctity of life, it comes as a shock that they would sign onto a statement declaring unwavering support for a practice that routinely abandons and discards millions of little lives.
Yet, that’s exactly what happened last week when every single one of the 49 senators who make up the GOP’s share of the upper congressional chamber endorsed “nationwide access to IVF” under the guise that it has “allowed millions of aspiring parents to start and grow their families.”
Standard practice for in vitro fertilization requires harvesting and fertilizing multiple eggs to increase the chances of successful petri dish conception. The hundreds of thousands of IVF cycles that occur in the United States each year suggest big batches of embryos are manufactured only to be pushed aside due to eugenics-esque genetic grading that leads to discard or abandonment in freezers.
The Republicans’ statement suggests that they want this reproductive tech available to anyone and everyone, including accused pedophiles, who want to create potentially motherless and fatherless children by whatever means necessary.
The politicians who expressed “strong support” for that process court and represent some of the most Christian, pro-life voters in the union. Their reasoning for standing behind big fertility and IVF, however, hinges on the same philosophy as the abortive practices they so vehemently detest — unborn children should only survive when they are wanted — and does not reconcile with pro-life beliefs.
‘Womb to Tomb’
To be pro-life means to value the natural rights humans are endowed with at the very beginning. In an IVF setting, that means life begins in the split second an embryologist successfully deposits sperm on an egg.
“Conception” is not some arbitrary definition that activists concerned about the rise of assisted reproductive technology imposed years after the fight for the unborn began. For years now, modern science, medicine, many states, and even abortion giant Planned Parenthood have all agreed that life starts the moment sperm fertilizes an egg.
Pro-lifers, including Sens. Katie Britt and Ted Cruz, have long used this widely accepted definition to fuel their fight against the abortion industry. When it comes to IVF, however, they are either suspiciously quiet or suspiciously supportive.
Abortion activists often accuse pro-lifers of only caring about babies until birth, something that the presence of thousands of pregnancy centers and millions in monetary resources for new parents easily refutes. Yet, Senate Republicans who have made the sanctity of life a hallmark of their careers have willingly walked into a trap by declaring that lives created in a lab are not as worthy of survival as lives that make it to the womb.
Outsiders and insiders have speculated for two years now that the pro-life movement is grappling for a post-Dobbs v. Jackson message and platform to latch onto. Here is their time to shine.
While there’s still plenty of work to be done when it comes to deceptive abortion ballot measures, calling out the pitfalls of IVF and other assisted reproductive technology (ART) fits perfectly into the pro-life framework activists spent decades building.
GOP politicians looking to live out their beliefs about the unborn should stop letting Senate Democrats with radical ART and abortion aims goad them into a fight that invalidates their self-professed pro-life repute and should instead opt for action.
They can start by decrying the denigration of human embryos as property instead of designating them as people who deserve a chance to live. They should also consider cheering on states that move to restrict unethical and immoral reproductive methods instead of introducing legislation that sacrifices those states’ rights to protect an industry that thrives on putting profit over people.
Failure to protect blastocysts while claiming to value life beginning at conception is a moral failure that the Senate Republicans who signed the IVF statement are far too close to normalizing.
