What Alabama’s IVF ruling reveals about the ascendant Christian nationalist movement

“He framed it entirely assuming that the state of Alabama is a theocracy, and that that is a legitimate way of evaluating laws and policies,” said Julie Ingersoll, a University of North Florida professor who studies religion and culture. “It looks like he decided to just dismiss the history of first amendment religious freedom jurisprudence … Read more

Republicans block bill that would protect IVF

‘A Quandary’: Republicans Hesitant To Back Federal Protections For IVF On the one hand, Republicans maintain that they support the continued use of IVF, calling it both pro-family and pro-life. But on the other hand, many in the GOP agree with the central premise of the ruling that found that frozen embryos are children with … Read more

Beyond shock and awe: Inside Trump’s potential second-term agenda

“We cannot ballot initiative our way out of this fundamental crisis of rights,” said Deirdre Schifeling, chief political and advocacy officer for the American Civil Liberties Union, one of many groups bracing for Trump and a Republican Congress to attempt to override state abortion protections. “I have no doubt that they would try to impose … Read more

Nevada abortion-rights group officially kicks off 2024 ballot measure effort — with a focus on IVF concerns

Nevada is now the latest state where abortion-rights groups have launched signature-collecting efforts to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. In the 20 months since that ruling, abortion-rights advocates have won every race in which the issue has appeared directly on the ballot. Read more … Read more

Speaker Johnson Says He Supports IVF. His Past Might Imply Otherwise.

Johnson’s name appears smack-dab in the middle of a list of 125 House Republicans co-sponsoring the Life at Conception Act, which was introduced in January 2023 as an anti-abortion bill after failing to pass earlier sessions of Congress. The bill’s language does not include any exceptions for IVF. Read more at HuffPost  

Alabama’s IVF warning to the country

Let’s be clear. This decision and its very obvious fallout are a victory for an extremist wing of the anti-abortion movement I’ve been covering for the last two years. These particular activists believe in the radical idea of “fetal personhood,” meaning they want to endow fetuses (and embryos) with full human rights and legal protection. … Read more

The Pro-life Movement’s Not-So-Secret Plan for Trump

The question people should be asking is whether Trump will give free rein to the anti-abortion advisers in his orbit, Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the UC Davis School of Law, told me. The big thing those advisers are pushing for is the reinterpretation and enforcement of the Comstock Act. As I wrote in … Read more

Fallout from the Alabama IVF decision – news round-up

‘My embryos aren’t safe here’: US patients struggling with infertility scramble after Alabama IVF ruling Alabama has long been a laboratory for fetal personhood measures. Between 1973 and 2022, when the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, Alabama law enforcement criminalized nearly 700 people for allegedly endangering “unborn life” – a record number of … Read more

Doctors shocked and angry as Alabama ruling throws IVF care into turmoil

“We’re legislating malpractice – we’re saying, ‘You don’t use your normal medical principles, all the training you went through, all your experience’ – we’re just tossing it out to this arbitrary idea that doesn’t have a biological basis,” said Chen. Read more at The Guardian  

Biden blasts Alabama Supreme Court’s IVF ruling as Harris, campaign blame Trump

“Today, in 2024 in America, women are being turned away from emergency rooms and forced to travel hundreds of miles for health care, while doctors fear prosecution for providing an abortion. And now, a court in Alabama put access to some fertility treatments at risk for families who are desperately trying to get pregnant,” he … Read more