Protecting and supporting families is not the focus of the Republican Party.
Are we supposed to be grateful?
Less than three weeks after Alabama’s Supreme Court unleashed massive chaos and hardship by ruling that frozen embryos created through in vitro fertilization (IVF) must be considered children, the state legislature passed a bill providing immunity to clinics that provide IVF and people who access that care. Alabama’s stridently anti-abortion governor hastily signed the legislation into law.
It was the kind of cynical, pathetic scramble we’ve come to expect each time anti-abortion leaders face the inevitable consequences of the actions they’ve taken to deny women’s reproductive autonomy and to inflict punishment and pain. Cruelty is the point. When confronted with public outrage as they advance their hugely unpopular agenda, they rush to distance themselves or hide.
Former President Trump—the architect of our dystopian nightmare—led a chorus of prominent Republican leaders who quickly decried the Alabama ruling. Trump declared that he “strongly supports the availability of IVF” and under his “leadership, the Republican Party will always support the creation of strong, thriving, healthy American families.”
The thing is, they don’t and never have.
They offer lip service, but their words are empty and their positions disgraceful. Protecting and supporting families is not the focus of the Republican Party. They prove that every day by opposing food and nutrition assistance, childcare subsidies, paid family leave, Medicaid expansion and other programs that help families be healthy and thrive.
Their rhetoric is empty; we need to pay attention to their actions, not their words. The horrors they forced on us will not end until we restore the protections of Roe v. Wade.
They prove it in Congress: Following the Alabama ruling, U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), who used IVF to have her own children, introduced a bill to protect IVF services nationwide—and a Republican senator immediately blocked it.
And they prove it in the states: The legislation Alabama lawmakers rushed to pass does nothing to change the fact that the state now considers embryos—a tiny cluster of cells—to be “unborn children” with equal protection under state law. This not only has major implications for fertility treatments and the health and well-being of families, but for abortion rights, contraception and the rights of pregnant women. Imagine a pregnant person has a sip of wine, fails to wear a seatbelt, or in some other way is judged to have imperiled the fetus. The consequences could be grave.
What worries me, living in a southern state that restricts abortion care, is that what starts in Alabama won’t stay in Alabama. We are steeling ourselves for similar rulings and laws that grant “personhood” to fetuses in other states. That will exacerbate the astounding levels of havoc and harm extremist anti-abortion lawmakers and jurists have already created throughout our nation.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade unleashed a Pandora’s box of horrors:
- Women have lost access to reproductive healthcare, including abortion.
- Clinics that also provide contraception and cancer screenings have closed.
- Hospitals are telling women with nonviable pregnancies to wait in parking lots until their conditions become critical, after which they may be eligible for life-saving care.
- Women are being denied medications they have long taken and need because those meds can result in abortion.
- A woman in Ohio was prosecuted after having a miscarriage for not disposing of the remains properly. (The grand jury declined to bring charges against her.)
- Medication abortion is under attack.
- Several states are threatening to ban travel to get abortion care. For example, Idaho signed a bill into law that makes it a felony to help a minor obtain an abortion, which includes transportation.
Now, imperiled access to IVF care has been added to that list of horrors, which will continue to grow. And let’s be clear: It didn’t end with abortion and it won’t end with IVF.
What worries me, living in a southern state that restricts abortion care, is that what starts in Alabama won’t stay in Alabama.
I’m a mom who knows the joy of raising children. I grappled with what “viability” means when I almost went into labor with my twins at 20 weeks. I’m a Black woman who sees firsthand the harm caused to my community as the Black maternal health crisis gets even worse because women are denied reproductive healthcare. I’m a doula who sees up close the struggles families face when they experience complicated pregnancies. And I’m an advocate who has been fighting these harmful policies and the deceit that underlies them for many years.
There are things I know: Anti-abortion leaders will always try to escape responsibility for the destruction they have wrought. Their rhetoric is empty; we need to pay attention to their actions, not their words. The horrors they forced on us will not end until we restore the protections of Roe v. Wade. And they do not now, nor have they ever, ever deserved to be called “pro-life.”
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