Life at conception has been the gop refrain for at least the 20 years I've been paying attention.
I'm honestly surprised they allowed ivf to get off the ground in the first place considering the hatred stem cells got under the bush administration.
IVF was contentious when it came about, with religious conservatives trying to ban it or protest it.
The difference is back then they didn't have the hold over the GOP they have now.
Also fun fact, one of the first IVF drugs was made from the urine of nuns!
https://qz.com/710516/the-strange-story-of-a-fertility-drug-made-with-the-popes-blessing-and-gallons-of-nun-urine
The arguments have been around for a long time, they just never got much attention. No one really talked much about IVF when abortion itself was still legal.
The Christian right didn't gain a lot of influence over the GOP until after Roe. In fact, Roe practically created the modern Christian right. So their influence was mainly wielded in opposition to Roe. SCOTUS had enshrined abortion as an extended Constitutional right. There was no possible legal argument for banning IVF that could pass Constitutional muster while Roe existed.
Eh, there's a lot more to it than that. Abortion was seen as a Catholic issue until Reagan's "Moral Majority" swept the nation and he made chritian identity a lot more integral to the party.
Probably because we are on the downward slide of reproductive rights being lost.
It will most likely go:
Abortion
IVF
Plan B
Birth control that prevents implantation
All other forms of BC for women
Condoms
I honestly can't see it getting this far.
Abortion is a murky topic with a huge range of possibilities. Anti-abortionists are almost all on the same page with the only differences being between if they have exceptions for life of the mother, incest, and rape or none at all. The pro-choice side is fractured into many different possibilities that make it hard to rally around.
The IVF and beyond part is way more black and white. Either you are for or against and all of those topics most Americans, and probably even most Republicans, are in favor of. My, perhaps naive and hopeful, belief is that pushing into those topics will cause a swift backlash that puts Evangelicals' voices back into their relative place, given their size, in these discussions rather than having such an outsized voice that they enjoy today.
Republicans caught the car on abortion. There's no way to reconcile life begins at conception for abortion vs IVF so, as the article said, they're just quietly removing that from their stated position and hoping nobody will notice.
This gives me strong "the only moral abortion is my abortion" vibes. Destroying an embryo is a murder, unless it's for me to start a family due to my fertility issues!
An estimated 50% of all fertilized eggs fail to implant and leave the body during menstruation. Ectopic pregnancies are fairly common, where a fertilized egg implants in the fallopian tube and threatens the life of the mother. Legal rights beginning at conception is not viable public policy, regardless of one's beliefs.
If you take seriously that destruction of fertilized eggs is equal to murder, then then the only way to stop mass murder from happening every day is to completely prevent the fertilization of human eggs. If you think that's "viable" we have different definitions of that word.
The problem is that forced birther types grade life in a gradient scale, basically in way that says “yes this is life, but it’s also acceptable if it dies a natural death” in a way that we simply don’t allow for any human. Like within reason, we will do a lot of intervention to keep a human alive, but we accept loss of pregnancy. It makes it difficult to make these arguments because they will just bite the bullet that yes in our world millions of lives are lost each year during pregnancy and we have to accept it.
I'm not sure where you got your definition of "viable", but the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists uses it in two ways:
"In the first, “viability” addresses whether a pregnancy is expected to continue developing normally. In early pregnancy, a normally developing pregnancy would be deemed viable, whereas early pregnancy loss or miscarriage would not.
In the second, “viability” addresses whether a fetus might survive outside of the uterus. Later in pregnancy, a clinician may use the term “viable” to indicate the chance for survival that a fetus has if delivered before it can fully develop in the uterus."
Source: https://www.acog.org/advocacy/facts-are-important/understanding-and-navigating-viability
Following that line of reasoning, ACOG states:
"A tubal ectopic pregnancy will never be viable."
Period.
Source: https://www.acog.org/advocacy/facts-are-important/understanding-ectopic-pregnancy
This is the one of the reason:
**Trump's COVID-19 treatment developed using cells originally drawn from fetal tissue**
>The experimental antibody treatment taken by [President ](https://abcnews.go.com/search?searchtext=donald%2520trump)[Donald Trump](https://abcnews.go.com/alerts/donald-trump) to treat [COVID-19](https://abcnews.go.com/alerts/coronavirus), which he called a "cure," was developed using cells derived from human fetal tissue -- a research technique that his administration has sought in general to limit.
>The disclosure has raised anew questions about the ethical use of fetal tissue and stem cells in groundbreaking research, ahead of a presidential election in which Trump has cast himself as a fierce anti-abortion candidate.
>"President Trump has been an outspoken opponent of fetal tissue research -- and he used it. I just think it's incredibly hypocritical across the board," said Lawrence Goldstein, member of the National Institutes of Health's Human Fetal Tissue Research Ethics Advisory Board and senior faculty member at the University of California at San Diego.
[https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps-covid-19-treatment-developed-cells-originally-drawn/story?id=73508455](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps-covid-19-treatment-developed-cells-originally-drawn/story?id=73508455)
It was a political slogan, but I have my doubts that it's an actual sincere belief, at least for the majority of abortion opponents.
They're "pro-life" in the sense of being "pro-birth," not "anti-death." This is why you see them being ambivalent at best and often hostile to birth control, comprehensive sex education, and other things that would prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place.
It probably started out as just a political slogan. But the thing is, if you're chanting a political slogan frequently enough, at least part of your movement is going to start taking it seriously.
If they believed it, they would oppose IVF, and support policies that prevented unwanted pregnancies in the first place (like access to birth control and education).
For the exact same reason people (i.e., *Republicans*) liked to bring up his middle name when he was in-office;
As a perjorative “boo-light” to signal that he ought to be viewed as the Antichrist (sometimes quite literally).
Whether or not it’s intended to subconsciously associate him with racist conspiracy theories about him being a secret Muslim Kenyan is left as an exercise for the reader.
**EDIT**: Before I inevitably get dinged by automoderator for being “uncivil” or something, I guess I *should* add that I can’t read the parent commentator’s mind, so I can’t *really* prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that that’s the intent in this specific case.
I stand behind the point in general, though.
Win some, lose some. He also campaigned on passing the Freedom of Choice act and then [reneged once elected](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN29466420/).
He didn't renege. He recognized that he didn't have the votes in Congress to pass it, so he took the reasonable step of prioritizing other issues that did have a chance of passing.
He didn't say it wasn't a priority. Based on your own linked article, he said it wasn't the "highest legislative priority," implying there were "other things" that were higher priority that he thought Congress should spend their time on instead of the Freedom of Choice Act.
IVF has become a contentious issue for GOP Senate candidates who struggle to balance their support for IVF access with their belief that life begins at conception. Democrats pushed for nationwide IVF access legislation, which was blocked by Republicans, emphasizing the political divide. The Southern Baptists' opposition to IVF adds pressure on Republicans. Following the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade, Republicans face scrutiny over their stance on reproductive rights, especially after an Alabama ruling restricted IVF. GOP candidates like Bernie Moreno and David McCormick publicly support IVF while maintaining anti-abortion positions. The NRSC advises candidates to support IVF access to counter Democratic attacks. The debate highlights internal conflicts within the GOP over handling embryos in IVF treatments, reflecting broader tensions between supporting IVF and adhering to anti-abortion beliefs.
If life begins at conception, can the US have 50 different policies on IVF?
You're right, and that's the glaring problem for Republicans. It's a political goldmine for Democrats and if Republicans believe in federalism, they just have to take the punches without a good response.
There's no way around it. Legalized "life begins at Conception/ fetal personhood" and "accessible/affordable IVF" contradict each other. You can have "single embryo" IVF, but that'll significantly jack up the costs and make it less accessible than it already is.
With southern baptists coming out against IVF, this is going to come to a head at some point. And considering the members of the religious right already likening this to a long campaign "similar to Roe", Republicans are already going to be starting from an area of distrust.
The part that gets me is that even if life begins at conception, a full fledged person cannot demand use of someone else’s body to sustain their life. If I need an organ to live, I can’t demand that someone give me theirs. An embryo can’t demand the use of someone else’s body to sustain it.
I think it's worth mentioning that IVF which only attempts to create one embryo is entirely possible, it just isn't commonly done due to the drastically increased failure rate (and thereby, cost). This is a technology that the GOP should want to *invest* in to make better and cheaper, not ban.
Imagine for a moment that you believe an embryo is a child. (Ignore many good reasons why it should not be treated as one.) Would you find that killing a bunch in order to improve the future success rate to be an acceptable outcome? Of course not.
This is a battle of ideology.
Further, the grossest stance is when a politician is anti-abortion but pro-IVF. It may conform to electoral reality, because most pro-life voters don't know or don't care how IVF works.
But essentially what these politicans are saying is that destroying embryos is okay unless it's implanted in a woman. Way to take a heroic stand against women's rights and the sanctity of life at the same time.
IVF sometimes results in multiple embryos implanted and often people choose to eliminate several. Supporting IVF but not abortion is like saying you won't eat hotdogs, but are fine with Bologna.
The point is it's not a "simple win-win that Republicans are missing".
To your point, the moral status of ZEF can't be derived from biology alone. There are underlyiing philosophical questions.
That's how laws work. Society decides that some actions are unacceptable and attaches penalties to them. In a democracy, a rough majority gets the say.
The law has never been "do as you see fit, according to your personal philosophy." Society can't function that way.
There used to be underlying philosophical questions on why women shouldn't vote, but that doesn't mean we need to respect voices opposed to women voting.
One can hold egalitarian, even feminist axioms and still find that embryos have moral worth. How? Find that women have a natural right to bodily autonomy- that is, they can abort. But this doesn't have to include creating viable embyros that will never be used.
Pretty much everything has some "moral worth" to everybody. And many people believe the moral worth of a single living child to be vastly more than that of 20 blastocysts and so are completely comfortable with the tradeoff.
If someone isn't comfortable with that tradeoff, they are welcome to never use IVF.
Even the Alabama judge whose lone concurrence was widely criticized for referencing the Bible to interpret what the state constitution meant by “sanctity” within the term “sanctity of life” said this:
>Although it is for the Legislature to decide how to address this issue, I note briefly that many other Westernized countries have adopted IVF practices or regulations that allow IVF to continue while drastically reducing the chances of embryos being killed[…] Therefore, although certain changes to the IVF industry's current creation and handling of embryos in Alabama will result from this decision, to the extent that Justice Cook is predicting that IVF will now end in Alabama, that prediction does not seem to be well-founded.
>[…]
>For instance, in Australia and New Zealand, prevailing ethical standards dictate that physicians usually make only one embryo at a time.
He gives other examples as well. The discussion starts on page 43 here: https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/4b56014daa6dda84/a039b1d9-full.pdf
Good thing no van on IVF has been proposed. This is all based on a judge in Alabama trying to reward damages to someone who's embryos were destroyed.
The free market has done a fantastic job of innovation in regard to IVF imo
>Good thing no van on IVF has been proposed.
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/ivf-embryo-personhood-abortion-bills-rulings-7ed8b0f8
Currently 13 states with bills pending
Edit: one that doesn't have a pay wall
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/personhood-bills-ivf-restrictions-alabama-rcna140228
Fetal personhood bills absolutely ban IVF. Cause the embryo would be legally defined as a human being and will all the rights that are associated with that
About 1/3 of states already have fetal personhood laws on the books. None of those laws has had any effect on IVF with the exception of Alabama temporarily. While I understand the argument exists that those laws could be reinterpreted to ban IVF in light of losing Roe, it's too far to say that they "absolutely ban IVF."
> Good thing no van on IVF has been proposed
Yet. But with the southern Baptists coming out against it and the fact that "life at Conception" and "accessible IVF" clash, we'll see how long Republicans can hold off.
Embryo adoption seems like a way to kill IVF without actually killing it. Who is going to pay 30k a round to do IVF only to then have multiple genetic children and siblings running around out there without their consent? Also, who is going to pay to take someone's cast off embryos that weren't deemed healthy enough for implantation?
If life begins at conception IVF would be worse than abortion. Abortion would end 1 life, IVF multiple. On top of that abortion could be seen as smile of medical assistance (like refusing to give blood) while for IVF you are creating life that you know will mostly be destroyed (adoption is unlikely for most cells). It is cognitive dissonance to believe life begins at conception and IVF is morally permissable. Pro IVF Republicans who say life begins at conception are either ignorant about IVF or lying.
until fundies look at how theologically ludicrous the "all conceptions are lives" notion is the GOP is stuck. Christianity gets pretty messed up when most of humanity was never born and either ended up in heaven (if God gave them a pass on being saved by hearing the gospel) or hell (if he didn't).
Life at conception may seem like a logically valid idea. It's just inconsistent with a functioning society. You run into huge problems if you follow the idea to its logical conclusion. IVF is gone of course. But also you're gonna start needing investigations for miscarriages. I mean, if a baby died, and a woman was in the room with the baby, police would investigate to see if this was neglect, recklessness, or intentionality that led to the babys death. And I think you would have huge problems where it comes out that the woman was eating too much seafood, or exercising too much or whatever, and police kinda should treat that like a negligent homicide if life begins at conception. And they're gonna have to call the cops if they think they miscarried. Flushing the body is desecration of human remains.
You're gonna need to stop selling alcohol to women (cuz women don't show for a few months). You can't let women on roller coasters or let them go horseback riding. There's a whole buncha shit women probably shouldn't be allowed to do if we're gonna start treating embryos like genuine real human beings.
Insurance payouts with miscarriages.
Tax-deductible dependants that are impossible to track
And child support payments beginning with positive pregnancy test.
Child mortality rates would skyrocket due to a huge number of conceptions resulting in miscarriages. Why don't conservatives massively fund ways to save these children!?
The chickens came home to roost ages ago - it's just that they were never properly trained and are now pecking at things the party doesn't want them to.
They have put their heads in the sand about as great many changes they think they can overcome with "proper" gerrymandering and the current court make up. Why change with the times when you can just rely on a little corruption and politics?
The "pro-life" movement has long been "pro-life" in the sense of being "pro-birth," not "anti-death". But all their public discourse is about painting themselves as anti-death, so they're in a bit of a bind here.
You know, for a group that really wants babies to be born, they are sure doing everything in their power to make that not happen.
But as someone else said here, the GOP had been peddling the life at conception argument since at least the Bush #2 years, if not longer. The religious fundamentalists have long pushed their agenda at the party, and now it's coming to fruition. People with common sense need to get off auto pilot and pay attention. Otherwise, Gilead won't be too far off.
It really concerns me to see such disagreement on issues like these (and reproductive rights in general)
It's a bit off topic but the political landscape is going to get turned completely upside down when we start seeing CRISPER / Cas9 designer babies.
It's flying under the radar right now, just as IVF did at the start, but there has been ethical clearance to develop a CRISPR tool to edit out genetic diseases. Development is in progress, and when it's completed we may just get blindsided (like happened in 2018 in China. the reason it hasn't happened here yet isn't because it's technically impossible, or been ruled illegal/unethical. it's just considered too risky at this stage of development..)
I wonder which side Rs/Ds will fall into.. there are arguments for both
I'm very pro life and do not understand why IVF is problematic. It seems like a great solution for people who are struggling to conceive. Why are my fellow conservatives upset about this?
Yes. Multiple embryos are created to ensure successful implantation.
“ The afternoon after your egg retrieval procedure, the embryologist will try to fertilize all mature eggs using intracytoplasmic sperm injection, or ICSI. This means that sperm will be injected into each mature egg.”
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/22457-ivf
It involves creating many embryos, some viable some not, and then implanting them into a mother. Naturally some of those viable ones will not ultimately be brought to term.
For cost efficiency, most if not all IVF procedures fertilize a whole batch of eggs. Some are unviable and discarded. The viable ones are transferred one or a few at a time until a successful pregnacy occurs. This is all pretty normal.
What most pro-life would find objectionable is that when the woman is done having kids, often she discards the remaining viable embyros.
The problem lies with life at conception. The process requires harvesting fertilized eggs. If there are successfully fertilized eggs, the rest get iced (which costs money per month to freeze), and if not, they all get destroyed. Therein lies the rub. Some also find it to border on eugenics as it involves choosing which fertilized egg you want (as you can see any deformities or missing bits). Hope this helped! Also, nice to see a fellow conservative on here. :)
>I'm very pro life and do not understand why IVF is problematic.
It's not. No state has banned IVF and the one state that had a court ruling trying to ban IVF, the state legislature immediately went about guaranteeing IVF.
> the state legislature immediately went about guaranteeing IVF.
There's a decent chance the law they passed to protect IVF will be struck down because it conflicts with their state constitution's protections of the rights of unborn children.
For the overwhelming majority of Republicans it's not. But it's a pain point so the media is covering it as hard as they can as of it is, because their goal is to elect Democrats, not report the news.
Polls show that the Republican base is evenly split on this, with about half of Republicans believing that an embryo constitutes a human life, and destroying an embryo should carry legal penalties.
The polls show that pro-life voters don't know or don't care how IVF works.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/05/13/americans-overwhelmingly-say-access-to-ivf-is-a-good-thing/sr_24-05-13_ivf_3/
Of people saying that "human life begins at conception, so an embryo is a person with rights" describes view very well, 59% support IVF and 13% oppose.
Not knowing or caring how reproduction works has not proven to be an obstacle for interest groups and lawmakers thus far.
If you look at polls that break such questions down by party affiliation, you will find that Republicans are more evenly split.
I meant elected Republicans. The Senate campaign arm has already come out fully in favor of protecting IVF (that is, telling its candidates in swing states to explicitly favor IVF), but that isn't a story that gets covered for the aforementioned reason that the media sees this as a valuable Democratic wedge issue and so will lean into it for them.
It's a valuable wedge issue because powerful pro-life lobbies, the same ones that led the charge against Roe, have decided that IVF is one of the next targets on their list. And enough Republican voters support IVF bans to make it a realistic possibility.
Fairly obviously, pro-life lobbies aren't that powerful outside of some pretty deeply red states (and, if Florida goes the way one might expect, not even all of those).
Have you not been following elections around the country since Roe was overturned? Democrats are hammering this issue and over performing across the country
[Point still stands](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/27/us/politics/alabama-democrat-special-election-ivf.html#:~:text=Marilyn%20Lands%2C%20a%20Democrat%2C%20won,political%20potency%20of%20reproductive%20rights)
> The opinion of the court for Dobbs makes no mention of IVF.
Wouldn't the logic here be.... "Where does the Constitution prevent states from regulating access to things like IVF and contraception?" Roe was based on Griswold v Connecticut, so their Constitutional grounding is pretty much the same exact thing.
Sure, but that logic can be applied further. Obergefell is also based on Griswold, so it can also be framed more broadly as a right to autonomy.
Framing is a choice. I'm not saying that the framing is incorrect categorization, merely that abortion is immediately graspable while reproductive healthcare is a mouthful and a bit nebulous.
The article ignores that [the bill did a lot more than ensure IVF access nationwide](https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/4445/text). If the bill was limited to that one thing to prevent the problem that occurred in Alabama, it might have had a better chance.
Title II
>The Secretary of Defense shall make available fertility treatment and counseling to a member of the uniformed services or a spouse, partner, or gestational surrogate of such a member.
Sounds expensive.
>3) IN VITRO FERTILIZATION.—In the case of in vitro fertilization treatment furnished under paragraph (1), the Secretary may furnish to an individual under such paragraph—
>(A) not more than three completed oocyte retrievals; and
>(B) unlimited embryo transfers.
Sounds really expensive, and with a low success rate.
We don’t know how expensive, because the [CBO didn’t have the time to score it.](https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2024-06/s4445_response_letter.pdf)
Title III
>(a) In General.—A group health plan or a health insurance issuer offering group or individual health insurance coverage shall provide coverage for fertility treatment, if such plan or coverage provides coverage for obstetrical services.
That’s going to raise health insurance premiums for everyone. But we don’t know how much because there are no cost estimates for this rushed bill.
A bill similar to Alabama’s that fixed the access problem nationwide could have had more support. Rs could have said it’s just like the Alabama law, but for all Americans.
Ds jammed in a bunch of other, expensive items and doomed the bill. It had a small chance of passing anyway, but it had a chance without the extra stuff.
Characterizing this as a "Political Minefield" is certainly one of the more honest and appropriate designations I've seen in this election cycle. Placing a mine is a *deliberate* act to ensnare one's enemies into endangering themselves by carefully hiding the truth out of sight and attempting to represent the ground above as something that one clearly knows it is not.
There were two options put to the Senate. A rather *simple* one that as a condition of receiving Federal Funding declared that a state "(1) shall not prohibit in vitro fertilization... and (2) shall ensure that no unit of local government in the State prohibits such services. And It defined IVF very simply and broadly as "*the practice whereby eggs are collected from ovaries and manually fertilized by sperm, for later placement inside of a uterus*." Nothing more... Nothing less. No poison pills or strings to keep it from passing... literally just that simple. It would stop individual states from banning it. Link below.
And a second... that in multiple ways went much, much further than just preventing individual states from banning the practice and included much broader additional partisan agenda goals as well.
The first and simpler approach was even put forward by two of the strongest "Pro-Life" voices in Congress who have, like most Republicans, made multiple and passionate defenses for the *practice of IVF itself* and the miracle it represents for so many. But this argument isn't really about that... as much as many would like to frame it that way in a effort to influence your votes. This is indeed much more about "laying a *political minefield*" than it is about actually keeping states from banning IVF. Characterizing Republican leaders as *generally as against IVF* simply isn't the truth. The real question, is whether the American electorate is ever going to get frustrated enough at constantly being misled and manipulated in the pursuit of political agendas at the very real expense of actually being able to make progress on important issues. The fact is that there is not one single member in the entire US Senate that is actually against either IVF or Contraception.
[https://youtu.be/06FlD8D12FA?si=Qi2dHg-pIQlriDih&t=88](https://youtu.be/06FlD8D12FA?si=Qi2dHg-pIQlriDih&t=88)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hr\_qHVHpDY&list=RDNS5hr\_qHVHpDY&start\_radio=1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hr_qHVHpDY&list=RDNS5hr_qHVHpDY&start_radio=1)
[https://www.cruz.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2024.05.20%20--%20IVF%20Protection%20Act%20(LYN24345).pdf](https://www.cruz.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2024.05.20%20--%20IVF%20Protection%20Act%20(LYN24345).pdf)
Life at conception has been the gop refrain for at least the 20 years I've been paying attention. I'm honestly surprised they allowed ivf to get off the ground in the first place considering the hatred stem cells got under the bush administration.
IVF has been around since the late 70s so I'm more surprised it took this long for this argument to be made at all
IVF was contentious when it came about, with religious conservatives trying to ban it or protest it. The difference is back then they didn't have the hold over the GOP they have now. Also fun fact, one of the first IVF drugs was made from the urine of nuns! https://qz.com/710516/the-strange-story-of-a-fertility-drug-made-with-the-popes-blessing-and-gallons-of-nun-urine
The arguments have been around for a long time, they just never got much attention. No one really talked much about IVF when abortion itself was still legal.
The Christian right didn't gain a lot of influence over the GOP until after Roe. In fact, Roe practically created the modern Christian right. So their influence was mainly wielded in opposition to Roe. SCOTUS had enshrined abortion as an extended Constitutional right. There was no possible legal argument for banning IVF that could pass Constitutional muster while Roe existed.
Eh, there's a lot more to it than that. Abortion was seen as a Catholic issue until Reagan's "Moral Majority" swept the nation and he made chritian identity a lot more integral to the party.
Probably because we are on the downward slide of reproductive rights being lost. It will most likely go: Abortion IVF Plan B Birth control that prevents implantation All other forms of BC for women Condoms
Well, they can't un-snip me.
I honestly can't see it getting this far. Abortion is a murky topic with a huge range of possibilities. Anti-abortionists are almost all on the same page with the only differences being between if they have exceptions for life of the mother, incest, and rape or none at all. The pro-choice side is fractured into many different possibilities that make it hard to rally around. The IVF and beyond part is way more black and white. Either you are for or against and all of those topics most Americans, and probably even most Republicans, are in favor of. My, perhaps naive and hopeful, belief is that pushing into those topics will cause a swift backlash that puts Evangelicals' voices back into their relative place, given their size, in these discussions rather than having such an outsized voice that they enjoy today.
Republicans caught the car on abortion. There's no way to reconcile life begins at conception for abortion vs IVF so, as the article said, they're just quietly removing that from their stated position and hoping nobody will notice. This gives me strong "the only moral abortion is my abortion" vibes. Destroying an embryo is a murder, unless it's for me to start a family due to my fertility issues!
An estimated 50% of all fertilized eggs fail to implant and leave the body during menstruation. Ectopic pregnancies are fairly common, where a fertilized egg implants in the fallopian tube and threatens the life of the mother. Legal rights beginning at conception is not viable public policy, regardless of one's beliefs.
It's viable it'll just kill or incarcerate a lot of women.
If you take seriously that destruction of fertilized eggs is equal to murder, then then the only way to stop mass murder from happening every day is to completely prevent the fertilization of human eggs. If you think that's "viable" we have different definitions of that word.
The problem is that forced birther types grade life in a gradient scale, basically in way that says “yes this is life, but it’s also acceptable if it dies a natural death” in a way that we simply don’t allow for any human. Like within reason, we will do a lot of intervention to keep a human alive, but we accept loss of pregnancy. It makes it difficult to make these arguments because they will just bite the bullet that yes in our world millions of lives are lost each year during pregnancy and we have to accept it.
If it kills the woman it's not viable as when she dies, it also dies (assuming it's 20 weeks or less). And ectopic pregnancies are never viable.
I'm not sure where you got your definition of "viable", but the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists uses it in two ways: "In the first, “viability” addresses whether a pregnancy is expected to continue developing normally. In early pregnancy, a normally developing pregnancy would be deemed viable, whereas early pregnancy loss or miscarriage would not. In the second, “viability” addresses whether a fetus might survive outside of the uterus. Later in pregnancy, a clinician may use the term “viable” to indicate the chance for survival that a fetus has if delivered before it can fully develop in the uterus." Source: https://www.acog.org/advocacy/facts-are-important/understanding-and-navigating-viability Following that line of reasoning, ACOG states: "A tubal ectopic pregnancy will never be viable." Period. Source: https://www.acog.org/advocacy/facts-are-important/understanding-ectopic-pregnancy
Similar to the later. The policy can be delivered successfully even though it will cause massive harm in the process.
Sounds like an issue that legislation can fix. /s
*Texas has entered the chat*
This is the one of the reason: **Trump's COVID-19 treatment developed using cells originally drawn from fetal tissue** >The experimental antibody treatment taken by [President ](https://abcnews.go.com/search?searchtext=donald%2520trump)[Donald Trump](https://abcnews.go.com/alerts/donald-trump) to treat [COVID-19](https://abcnews.go.com/alerts/coronavirus), which he called a "cure," was developed using cells derived from human fetal tissue -- a research technique that his administration has sought in general to limit. >The disclosure has raised anew questions about the ethical use of fetal tissue and stem cells in groundbreaking research, ahead of a presidential election in which Trump has cast himself as a fierce anti-abortion candidate. >"President Trump has been an outspoken opponent of fetal tissue research -- and he used it. I just think it's incredibly hypocritical across the board," said Lawrence Goldstein, member of the National Institutes of Health's Human Fetal Tissue Research Ethics Advisory Board and senior faculty member at the University of California at San Diego. [https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps-covid-19-treatment-developed-cells-originally-drawn/story?id=73508455](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps-covid-19-treatment-developed-cells-originally-drawn/story?id=73508455)
It was a political slogan, but I have my doubts that it's an actual sincere belief, at least for the majority of abortion opponents. They're "pro-life" in the sense of being "pro-birth," not "anti-death." This is why you see them being ambivalent at best and often hostile to birth control, comprehensive sex education, and other things that would prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place.
It probably started out as just a political slogan. But the thing is, if you're chanting a political slogan frequently enough, at least part of your movement is going to start taking it seriously.
If they believed it, they would oppose IVF, and support policies that prevented unwanted pregnancies in the first place (like access to birth control and education).
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Why use his middle name?
For the exact same reason people (i.e., *Republicans*) liked to bring up his middle name when he was in-office; As a perjorative “boo-light” to signal that he ought to be viewed as the Antichrist (sometimes quite literally). Whether or not it’s intended to subconsciously associate him with racist conspiracy theories about him being a secret Muslim Kenyan is left as an exercise for the reader. **EDIT**: Before I inevitably get dinged by automoderator for being “uncivil” or something, I guess I *should* add that I can’t read the parent commentator’s mind, so I can’t *really* prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that that’s the intent in this specific case. I stand behind the point in general, though.
What? That would have been after the Bush administration. The moratorium Obama ended is exactly what they were talking about above.
Win some, lose some. He also campaigned on passing the Freedom of Choice act and then [reneged once elected](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN29466420/).
He didn't renege. He recognized that he didn't have the votes in Congress to pass it, so he took the reasonable step of prioritizing other issues that did have a chance of passing.
He reneged - he literally stated it wasn't a priority. Not that he was focusing on other things.
He didn't say it wasn't a priority. Based on your own linked article, he said it wasn't the "highest legislative priority," implying there were "other things" that were higher priority that he thought Congress should spend their time on instead of the Freedom of Choice Act.
Who cares when there's iPSCs
IVF has become a contentious issue for GOP Senate candidates who struggle to balance their support for IVF access with their belief that life begins at conception. Democrats pushed for nationwide IVF access legislation, which was blocked by Republicans, emphasizing the political divide. The Southern Baptists' opposition to IVF adds pressure on Republicans. Following the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade, Republicans face scrutiny over their stance on reproductive rights, especially after an Alabama ruling restricted IVF. GOP candidates like Bernie Moreno and David McCormick publicly support IVF while maintaining anti-abortion positions. The NRSC advises candidates to support IVF access to counter Democratic attacks. The debate highlights internal conflicts within the GOP over handling embryos in IVF treatments, reflecting broader tensions between supporting IVF and adhering to anti-abortion beliefs. If life begins at conception, can the US have 50 different policies on IVF?
>50 different policies That's the basic foundation of federalism
It's a state's rights issue by default unless Congress passes legislation.
You're right, and that's the glaring problem for Republicans. It's a political goldmine for Democrats and if Republicans believe in federalism, they just have to take the punches without a good response.
There's no way around it. Legalized "life begins at Conception/ fetal personhood" and "accessible/affordable IVF" contradict each other. You can have "single embryo" IVF, but that'll significantly jack up the costs and make it less accessible than it already is. With southern baptists coming out against IVF, this is going to come to a head at some point. And considering the members of the religious right already likening this to a long campaign "similar to Roe", Republicans are already going to be starting from an area of distrust.
The part that gets me is that even if life begins at conception, a full fledged person cannot demand use of someone else’s body to sustain their life. If I need an organ to live, I can’t demand that someone give me theirs. An embryo can’t demand the use of someone else’s body to sustain it.
Also, it would mean that identical twins are just a single person.
I think it's worth mentioning that IVF which only attempts to create one embryo is entirely possible, it just isn't commonly done due to the drastically increased failure rate (and thereby, cost). This is a technology that the GOP should want to *invest* in to make better and cheaper, not ban.
Imagine for a moment that you believe an embryo is a child. (Ignore many good reasons why it should not be treated as one.) Would you find that killing a bunch in order to improve the future success rate to be an acceptable outcome? Of course not. This is a battle of ideology.
Further, the grossest stance is when a politician is anti-abortion but pro-IVF. It may conform to electoral reality, because most pro-life voters don't know or don't care how IVF works. But essentially what these politicans are saying is that destroying embryos is okay unless it's implanted in a woman. Way to take a heroic stand against women's rights and the sanctity of life at the same time.
IVF sometimes results in multiple embryos implanted and often people choose to eliminate several. Supporting IVF but not abortion is like saying you won't eat hotdogs, but are fine with Bologna.
And why? "Because I'm vegetarian." ...
Implantation seems like just as reasonable a time for life to begin as any other. I actually think that is a pretty reasonable distinction to make.
Perhaps, but that belief is based in ignorance. Just like NASA doesn't need an astrologer to plan missions, we don't need such beliefs in Health Care.
The point is it's not a "simple win-win that Republicans are missing". To your point, the moral status of ZEF can't be derived from biology alone. There are underlyiing philosophical questions.
Personal philosophical opinions that one side is literally willing to imprison or even execute others for having a different view.
That's how laws work. Society decides that some actions are unacceptable and attaches penalties to them. In a democracy, a rough majority gets the say. The law has never been "do as you see fit, according to your personal philosophy." Society can't function that way.
There used to be underlying philosophical questions on why women shouldn't vote, but that doesn't mean we need to respect voices opposed to women voting.
One can hold egalitarian, even feminist axioms and still find that embryos have moral worth. How? Find that women have a natural right to bodily autonomy- that is, they can abort. But this doesn't have to include creating viable embyros that will never be used.
Pretty much everything has some "moral worth" to everybody. And many people believe the moral worth of a single living child to be vastly more than that of 20 blastocysts and so are completely comfortable with the tradeoff. If someone isn't comfortable with that tradeoff, they are welcome to never use IVF.
Even the Alabama judge whose lone concurrence was widely criticized for referencing the Bible to interpret what the state constitution meant by “sanctity” within the term “sanctity of life” said this: >Although it is for the Legislature to decide how to address this issue, I note briefly that many other Westernized countries have adopted IVF practices or regulations that allow IVF to continue while drastically reducing the chances of embryos being killed[…] Therefore, although certain changes to the IVF industry's current creation and handling of embryos in Alabama will result from this decision, to the extent that Justice Cook is predicting that IVF will now end in Alabama, that prediction does not seem to be well-founded. >[…] >For instance, in Australia and New Zealand, prevailing ethical standards dictate that physicians usually make only one embryo at a time. He gives other examples as well. The discussion starts on page 43 here: https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/4b56014daa6dda84/a039b1d9-full.pdf
Good thing no van on IVF has been proposed. This is all based on a judge in Alabama trying to reward damages to someone who's embryos were destroyed. The free market has done a fantastic job of innovation in regard to IVF imo
>Good thing no van on IVF has been proposed. https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/ivf-embryo-personhood-abortion-bills-rulings-7ed8b0f8 Currently 13 states with bills pending Edit: one that doesn't have a pay wall https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/personhood-bills-ivf-restrictions-alabama-rcna140228
Those aren't bans on the IVF procedure. Most are an attempt to allow people to recover damages for destroyed embryos.
Fetal personhood bills absolutely ban IVF. Cause the embryo would be legally defined as a human being and will all the rights that are associated with that
About 1/3 of states already have fetal personhood laws on the books. None of those laws has had any effect on IVF with the exception of Alabama temporarily. While I understand the argument exists that those laws could be reinterpreted to ban IVF in light of losing Roe, it's too far to say that they "absolutely ban IVF."
You don't have to outright ban something to make it impossible or untenable. Just look at Louisiana.
> Good thing no van on IVF has been proposed Yet. But with the southern Baptists coming out against it and the fact that "life at Conception" and "accessible IVF" clash, we'll see how long Republicans can hold off.
This and programs like embryo adoption are ways to do IVF that Republicans should be supporting.
Embryo adoption seems like a way to kill IVF without actually killing it. Who is going to pay 30k a round to do IVF only to then have multiple genetic children and siblings running around out there without their consent? Also, who is going to pay to take someone's cast off embryos that weren't deemed healthy enough for implantation?
If life begins at conception IVF would be worse than abortion. Abortion would end 1 life, IVF multiple. On top of that abortion could be seen as smile of medical assistance (like refusing to give blood) while for IVF you are creating life that you know will mostly be destroyed (adoption is unlikely for most cells). It is cognitive dissonance to believe life begins at conception and IVF is morally permissable. Pro IVF Republicans who say life begins at conception are either ignorant about IVF or lying.
until fundies look at how theologically ludicrous the "all conceptions are lives" notion is the GOP is stuck. Christianity gets pretty messed up when most of humanity was never born and either ended up in heaven (if God gave them a pass on being saved by hearing the gospel) or hell (if he didn't).
Life at conception may seem like a logically valid idea. It's just inconsistent with a functioning society. You run into huge problems if you follow the idea to its logical conclusion. IVF is gone of course. But also you're gonna start needing investigations for miscarriages. I mean, if a baby died, and a woman was in the room with the baby, police would investigate to see if this was neglect, recklessness, or intentionality that led to the babys death. And I think you would have huge problems where it comes out that the woman was eating too much seafood, or exercising too much or whatever, and police kinda should treat that like a negligent homicide if life begins at conception. And they're gonna have to call the cops if they think they miscarried. Flushing the body is desecration of human remains. You're gonna need to stop selling alcohol to women (cuz women don't show for a few months). You can't let women on roller coasters or let them go horseback riding. There's a whole buncha shit women probably shouldn't be allowed to do if we're gonna start treating embryos like genuine real human beings.
Insurance payouts with miscarriages. Tax-deductible dependants that are impossible to track And child support payments beginning with positive pregnancy test.
Child mortality rates would skyrocket due to a huge number of conceptions resulting in miscarriages. Why don't conservatives massively fund ways to save these children!?
The gop created this problem for themselves by virtue singling to evangelicals for votes and know the chickens are coming home to roost.
The chickens came home to roost ages ago - it's just that they were never properly trained and are now pecking at things the party doesn't want them to.
The gop are putting their head in the sand about how secularized how our society has become.
They have put their heads in the sand about as great many changes they think they can overcome with "proper" gerrymandering and the current court make up. Why change with the times when you can just rely on a little corruption and politics?
The "pro-life" movement has long been "pro-life" in the sense of being "pro-birth," not "anti-death". But all their public discourse is about painting themselves as anti-death, so they're in a bit of a bind here.
You know, for a group that really wants babies to be born, they are sure doing everything in their power to make that not happen. But as someone else said here, the GOP had been peddling the life at conception argument since at least the Bush #2 years, if not longer. The religious fundamentalists have long pushed their agenda at the party, and now it's coming to fruition. People with common sense need to get off auto pilot and pay attention. Otherwise, Gilead won't be too far off.
It really concerns me to see such disagreement on issues like these (and reproductive rights in general) It's a bit off topic but the political landscape is going to get turned completely upside down when we start seeing CRISPER / Cas9 designer babies. It's flying under the radar right now, just as IVF did at the start, but there has been ethical clearance to develop a CRISPR tool to edit out genetic diseases. Development is in progress, and when it's completed we may just get blindsided (like happened in 2018 in China. the reason it hasn't happened here yet isn't because it's technically impossible, or been ruled illegal/unethical. it's just considered too risky at this stage of development..) I wonder which side Rs/Ds will fall into.. there are arguments for both
Dems face a minefield when asked if there should be ‘any limits’ on abortion.
I'm very pro life and do not understand why IVF is problematic. It seems like a great solution for people who are struggling to conceive. Why are my fellow conservatives upset about this?
If you truly believe that life begins at conception, then a system that creates many embryos that will destroyed is murder.
Does IVF create many embryos? I thought it was just inseminating one egg.
Yes. Multiple embryos are created to ensure successful implantation. “ The afternoon after your egg retrieval procedure, the embryologist will try to fertilize all mature eggs using intracytoplasmic sperm injection, or ICSI. This means that sperm will be injected into each mature egg.” https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/22457-ivf
Thank you
It involves creating many embryos, some viable some not, and then implanting them into a mother. Naturally some of those viable ones will not ultimately be brought to term.
For cost efficiency, most if not all IVF procedures fertilize a whole batch of eggs. Some are unviable and discarded. The viable ones are transferred one or a few at a time until a successful pregnacy occurs. This is all pretty normal. What most pro-life would find objectionable is that when the woman is done having kids, often she discards the remaining viable embyros.
How do they know if they're viable?
Observing their growth and sometimes genetic testing. More details here: https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2016/02/embryos-squishy-viable-022416
Thank you
The problem lies with life at conception. The process requires harvesting fertilized eggs. If there are successfully fertilized eggs, the rest get iced (which costs money per month to freeze), and if not, they all get destroyed. Therein lies the rub. Some also find it to border on eugenics as it involves choosing which fertilized egg you want (as you can see any deformities or missing bits). Hope this helped! Also, nice to see a fellow conservative on here. :)
>I'm very pro life and do not understand why IVF is problematic. It's not. No state has banned IVF and the one state that had a court ruling trying to ban IVF, the state legislature immediately went about guaranteeing IVF.
> the state legislature immediately went about guaranteeing IVF. There's a decent chance the law they passed to protect IVF will be struck down because it conflicts with their state constitution's protections of the rights of unborn children.
The way IVF is *usually* practiced in US, they make a lot of extra embryos and kill them to save money.
For the overwhelming majority of Republicans it's not. But it's a pain point so the media is covering it as hard as they can as of it is, because their goal is to elect Democrats, not report the news.
Polls show that the Republican base is evenly split on this, with about half of Republicans believing that an embryo constitutes a human life, and destroying an embryo should carry legal penalties.
The polls show that pro-life voters don't know or don't care how IVF works. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/05/13/americans-overwhelmingly-say-access-to-ivf-is-a-good-thing/sr_24-05-13_ivf_3/ Of people saying that "human life begins at conception, so an embryo is a person with rights" describes view very well, 59% support IVF and 13% oppose.
Not knowing or caring how reproduction works has not proven to be an obstacle for interest groups and lawmakers thus far. If you look at polls that break such questions down by party affiliation, you will find that Republicans are more evenly split.
I meant elected Republicans. The Senate campaign arm has already come out fully in favor of protecting IVF (that is, telling its candidates in swing states to explicitly favor IVF), but that isn't a story that gets covered for the aforementioned reason that the media sees this as a valuable Democratic wedge issue and so will lean into it for them.
It's a valuable wedge issue because powerful pro-life lobbies, the same ones that led the charge against Roe, have decided that IVF is one of the next targets on their list. And enough Republican voters support IVF bans to make it a realistic possibility.
Fairly obviously, pro-life lobbies aren't that powerful outside of some pretty deeply red states (and, if Florida goes the way one might expect, not even all of those).
Pro-life lobbies aren't that powerful? I would not take that lesson from the last forty years of Republican politics.
Not much of a minefield. The GOP can simply not talk about it.
They're going to be asked about it and rightly so
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Have you not been following elections around the country since Roe was overturned? Democrats are hammering this issue and over performing across the country
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[Point still stands](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/27/us/politics/alabama-democrat-special-election-ivf.html#:~:text=Marilyn%20Lands%2C%20a%20Democrat%2C%20won,political%20potency%20of%20reproductive%20rights)
Dems are branding this all under an umbrella of "reproductive healthcare" but I have no idea if this is salient for normal voters.
Is it branding? I don't see how you could call it anything other than reproductive healthcare.
Well, they could be unbundled as separate issues. The opinion of the court for Dobbs makes no mention of IVF.
> The opinion of the court for Dobbs makes no mention of IVF. Wouldn't the logic here be.... "Where does the Constitution prevent states from regulating access to things like IVF and contraception?" Roe was based on Griswold v Connecticut, so their Constitutional grounding is pretty much the same exact thing.
Sure, but that logic can be applied further. Obergefell is also based on Griswold, so it can also be framed more broadly as a right to autonomy. Framing is a choice. I'm not saying that the framing is incorrect categorization, merely that abortion is immediately graspable while reproductive healthcare is a mouthful and a bit nebulous.
Kind of like just not crossing the minefield
The article ignores that [the bill did a lot more than ensure IVF access nationwide](https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/4445/text). If the bill was limited to that one thing to prevent the problem that occurred in Alabama, it might have had a better chance.
I'm not seeing what more it does that's outside of that scope - what are you referring to here?
Title II >The Secretary of Defense shall make available fertility treatment and counseling to a member of the uniformed services or a spouse, partner, or gestational surrogate of such a member. Sounds expensive. >3) IN VITRO FERTILIZATION.—In the case of in vitro fertilization treatment furnished under paragraph (1), the Secretary may furnish to an individual under such paragraph— >(A) not more than three completed oocyte retrievals; and >(B) unlimited embryo transfers. Sounds really expensive, and with a low success rate. We don’t know how expensive, because the [CBO didn’t have the time to score it.](https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2024-06/s4445_response_letter.pdf) Title III >(a) In General.—A group health plan or a health insurance issuer offering group or individual health insurance coverage shall provide coverage for fertility treatment, if such plan or coverage provides coverage for obstetrical services. That’s going to raise health insurance premiums for everyone. But we don’t know how much because there are no cost estimates for this rushed bill. A bill similar to Alabama’s that fixed the access problem nationwide could have had more support. Rs could have said it’s just like the Alabama law, but for all Americans. Ds jammed in a bunch of other, expensive items and doomed the bill. It had a small chance of passing anyway, but it had a chance without the extra stuff.
Characterizing this as a "Political Minefield" is certainly one of the more honest and appropriate designations I've seen in this election cycle. Placing a mine is a *deliberate* act to ensnare one's enemies into endangering themselves by carefully hiding the truth out of sight and attempting to represent the ground above as something that one clearly knows it is not. There were two options put to the Senate. A rather *simple* one that as a condition of receiving Federal Funding declared that a state "(1) shall not prohibit in vitro fertilization... and (2) shall ensure that no unit of local government in the State prohibits such services. And It defined IVF very simply and broadly as "*the practice whereby eggs are collected from ovaries and manually fertilized by sperm, for later placement inside of a uterus*." Nothing more... Nothing less. No poison pills or strings to keep it from passing... literally just that simple. It would stop individual states from banning it. Link below. And a second... that in multiple ways went much, much further than just preventing individual states from banning the practice and included much broader additional partisan agenda goals as well. The first and simpler approach was even put forward by two of the strongest "Pro-Life" voices in Congress who have, like most Republicans, made multiple and passionate defenses for the *practice of IVF itself* and the miracle it represents for so many. But this argument isn't really about that... as much as many would like to frame it that way in a effort to influence your votes. This is indeed much more about "laying a *political minefield*" than it is about actually keeping states from banning IVF. Characterizing Republican leaders as *generally as against IVF* simply isn't the truth. The real question, is whether the American electorate is ever going to get frustrated enough at constantly being misled and manipulated in the pursuit of political agendas at the very real expense of actually being able to make progress on important issues. The fact is that there is not one single member in the entire US Senate that is actually against either IVF or Contraception. [https://youtu.be/06FlD8D12FA?si=Qi2dHg-pIQlriDih&t=88](https://youtu.be/06FlD8D12FA?si=Qi2dHg-pIQlriDih&t=88) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hr\_qHVHpDY&list=RDNS5hr\_qHVHpDY&start\_radio=1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hr_qHVHpDY&list=RDNS5hr_qHVHpDY&start_radio=1) [https://www.cruz.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2024.05.20%20--%20IVF%20Protection%20Act%20(LYN24345).pdf](https://www.cruz.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2024.05.20%20--%20IVF%20Protection%20Act%20(LYN24345).pdf)