To lazy to look myself but has anyone asked pence about this or has he publicly announced anything?
I would be nice to see someone in politics go against something their party is in favor of for once.
Former president
Donald Trump and Republican candidates in key Senate races voiced support for in vitro fertilization treatment Friday, distancing themselves from a recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling that has again highlighted the electoral challenge Republicans face over their stances on
abortion and other reproductive rights.
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The Alabama court’s decision last week — that frozen embryos should be considered children and that people can be held liable for destroying them — initially was met largely with silence from Republican officeholders and candidates. But many Republican politicians have since sought to embrace IVF procedures, which have been utilized by thousands of families in the United States.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s
Dobbs v.
Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling in 2022, which overturned the federal right to an abortion, Republicans have
struggled to find a winning electoral strategy to address reproductive rights, particularly abortion. Last November, abortion rights played a role in a string of GOP losses across the country, and voters have rejected every opportunity to limit abortion care in several referendums, including in red states. Some Republicans, meanwhile, have continued to push for a federal abortion ban.
Friday’s expressions of support for IVF from Republicans came after the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the national group tasked with electing Republicans to the Senate, urged its candidates on the ballot this year to support IVF and reject government restrictions, citing the procedure’s popularity.
Democrats seek to leverage Alabama embryo ruling in an election year
“When responding to the Alabama Supreme Court ruling, it is imperative that our candidates align with the public’s overwhelming support for IVF and fertility treatments,” NRSC Executive Director Jason Thielman wrote in a memo to “Senate Candidates” dated Friday and obtained by The Washington Post.
Democrats have signaled that they plan to leverage the ruling in the 2024 elections. The White House and the Biden reelection campaign have placed the blame on Trump and the Supreme Court’s decision. And the IVF issue is already becoming fodder for campaigns and fundraising groups.
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesman David Bergstein said in a statement Friday, “The fact that the NRSC had to tell their candidates how unpopular their own agenda opposing women’s reproductive freedom is speaks for itself.”
Thielman described the Alabama ruling as “fodder for Democrats hoping to manipulate the abortion issue for electoral gain” and said that “there are zero Republican Senate candidates who support efforts to restrict access to fertility treatments.”
“NRSC encourages Republican Senate candidates to clearly and concisely reject efforts by the government to restrict IVF,” he wrote.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...=mc_magnet-embryo-ruling_inline_collection_16
The NRSC memo cited polling that appears to have been conducted by the firm of former Trump White House adviser Kellyanne Conway and that claimed that access to IVF is overwhelmingly popular. Much of the Republican Party for years has embraced the argument that life begins at conception, making that a cornerstone of GOP opposition to abortion. But the decision in Alabama has injected urgency into a debate that had been on the back burner.
Until Friday, Trump had been silent on the Alabama ruling.
His remaining rival for the GOP presidential nomination, former U.N. ambassador
Nikki Haley, has sent mixed signals on the issue. Haley initially said that she personally agreed that “embryos, to me, are babies” but has since emphasized that families and doctors should be in charge of their fertility decisions.
“Government doesn’t need to get into something this sensitive,” Haley said Saturday during an appearance on NBC’s “Today” show. “This should be between the doctor and the parents. Period. ... We want government to allow the conversation to be between the doctor and the parents without government getting in the way on the decisions that are made about them and what happens with these embryos.”
On Friday, Republican Senate candidates
Bernie Moreno and
Matt Dolan in Ohio,
Tim Sheehy in Montana,
Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania,
Kari Lake in Arizona,
Mike Rogers in Michigan, and
Sam Brown in Nevada were among those who posted messages on social media saying they support IVF. At least one Republican running for Senate, former Maryland governor Larry Hogan, expressed
support for IVF before the NRSC memo was issued.
The memo did not explicitly dictate how candidates should discuss personhood and embryos — an issue at the heart of the Alabama case — and instead focused largely on messaging that emphasizes promoting the expansion of families.
Still, the chair of the NRSC, Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), has co-sponsored several antiabortion bills. In 2021, he co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act, which would provide equal protection under the 14th Amendment “for the right to life of each born and preborn human person.” The bill also defines “human being” to “include each member of the species homo sapiens at all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization or cloning, or other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being.”
Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), who is running for a Senate seat in Michigan,
argued in a tweet Friday that Rogers, her possible general-election opponent, had previously co-sponsored four bills in Congress “that would have the same effect as the Alabama Supreme Court’s IVF ruling.”