Tag Archives: anti-abortion

How IVF exposed fissures in the Republican coalition

Originally published in Vox on September 26, 2024.

Donald Trump is struggling with female voters and occasionally acts like he knows it.

With the November election fast approaching, Republican political consultants have been bemoaning the fact that their presidential candidate continues to publicly boast about overturning Roe v. Wade — something a majority of Americans oppose. Trump’s openly anti-abortion pick for vice president, JD Vance, also continues to attract attention for his deeply unpopular insults of women who don’t have biological children.

These dynamics are exacerbated by the fact that the economy — typically Republicans’ strongest issue — continues to improve; the Fed recently cut interest rates and inflation has fallen to its lowest point in three and a half years, with gas and grocery prices plunging.

To help improve his chances, Trump has been trying to dispel fears. At the September presidential debate, when asked if he would veto a national abortion ban, Trump repeatedly dodged the question, insisting it wouldn’t be necessary since abortion rights are now under state control. This is only half-true: Trump is right that he’s unlikely to face a national abortion ban from Congress in the next four years.

But most anti-abortion leaders weren’t counting on that, anyway. The anti-abortion movement has been banking on more appointments of friendly federal judges and taking control of key federal agencies that could use executive power to heavily restrict reproductive freedom.

“We don’t need a federal abortion ban when we have Comstock on the books,” Jonathan Mitchell, the legal architect behind a 2021 law in Texas that effectively banned abortion, told the New York Times earlier this year. Mitchell was referring to the Comstock Act, an 1873 federal law that could prohibit anything associated with abortion from being sent in the mail. Such a ban could mean not only restricting abortion medication, the most common method used to end a pregnancy in the US, but also any medical equipment used during surgical abortion, like speculums, suction catheters, and dilators.

The Comstock Act was rendered moot by Roe v. Wade in the 1970s but never formally repealed, and now, with Roe gone, some conservatives, including Mitchell and JD Vance, are pushing for its revival. “I hope [Trump] doesn’t know about the existence of Comstock, because I just don’t want him to shoot off his mouth,” Mitchell added, urging anti-abortion groups to also “keep their mouths shut as much as possible until the election.”

Things seemed to be mostly going according to Mitchell’s plan, with Trump avoiding answering reporters’ Comstock Act questions and publicly insisting abortion was now a state duty. That is, until August, when Trump — seemingly more nervous about his election chances — announced on Truth Social that his administration would be “great for women and their reproductive rights.” He also finally told the media he would not use the Comstock Act to ban mailing abortion drugs, and on top of that, announced his administration would mandate health insurance companies cover the hefty cost of in vitro fertilization (IVF).

Trump’s new stances have not been clarifying or convincing enough for most voters — indeed, on the heels of him promising free IVF, he said he thought Florida’s six-week ban was too strict, and then announced he’d be voting against Florida’s proposed abortion rights ballot measure in November. That measure would legalize abortion up to viability to protect the patient’s health, as decided by their provider, and polls show most Floridians back it.

Still, Trump’s new rhetoric of (somewhat, sometimes) embracing reproductive rights has antagonized parts of his conservative base, who feel he’s taking the anti-abortion movement for granted and that he’s having his “Sister Souljah moment” with the segment of the electorate that helped deliver his victory in 2016. The immediate question is whether these conservatives will sit out in protest in November, and if they do, whether Trump can make up for it by drawing in more voters elsewhere. The larger, more enduring question is whether this portends an emerging split in the Republican coalition on the question of abortion, just a couple of years removed from the anti-abortion faction’s greatest victory.

Why Trump’s IVF announcement is causing problems with parts of his religious base

While opposition to abortion has been a fragile part of the GOP coalition for years, IVF emerged this year as a new point of tension among conservatives.

After Trump announced in late August that he’d back free IVF, anti-abortion groups immediately urged him to retract his stance. At first glance, it may seem puzzling that a faction of voters who identify as “pro-life” would oppose technology that helps people with infertility become parents. About 2 percent of births in the US are done through IVF, which involves fertilizing eggs outside of the body and then transferring embryos to a womb.

But the opposition makes more sense when IVF is understood as conflicting with “fetal personhood” — a core goal of a faction within the anti-abortion movement that seeks to grant fetuses (and embryos) full human rights and legal protections.

“Human embryos are created and discarded or frozen by dozens in most IVF procedures,” Matthew Yonke, a spokesperson for the Pro-Life Action League, told me. “It’s no way to treat human beings, and the federal government should not subsidize it.”

(Louisiana remains the only state to outright prohibit the destruction of embryos, requiring patients to either pay forever to store their unused embryos, or donate them to a married couple. Most states allow patients to decide what to do with any excess genetic material.)

Some social conservatives also lament that contemporary IVF treats parenthood like an individual right instead of a responsibility or privilege for committed couples, and others object to the ethical implications of sex selection and optimizing for certain characteristics, such as eye color or intelligence.

Ever since February, when Alabama’s Supreme Court issued its unprecedented legal decision that invoked God to claim frozen embryos count as “children” under state law, policymakers and prospective parents have been realizing how vulnerable IVF is in the United States, even as politicians scramble to assure voters it’s not actually at risk.

For religious conservatives who oppose IVF, the last seven months have provided a fresh opportunity to make their case against the assisted reproductive technology. In some states they’ve made political gains: the North Carolina Republican Party adopted a platform in June that opposes the destruction of human embryos. Also in June, the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the US, approved a resolution against IVF.

Anti-abortion leaders are prepared to fight for their long-term goal of fetal personhood, just as they did for decades to overturn Roe v. Wade. In many ways, these new IVF battles are just beginning: This past spring, a supermajority of justices on Florida’s Supreme Court signaled openness to a future fetal personhood challenge, suggesting that “pre-born children” are “persons” entitled to the right to life under the Florida Constitution. Regardless of whether Trump wins in November, these fights over reproductive technology will continue to embroil conservatives and the Republican Party.

Fiscal conservatives are getting ticked off, too

It’s not just the ethics of IVF that are causing fissures — Trump’s promise that the government would foot the bill has also sparked concern among conservative budget hawks.

The average out-of-pocket cost per IVF cycle stands at $24,000, according to a federal fact sheet, or $61,000 in total per successful live birth, since people often need multiple IVF cycles. While Trump’s team has refused to provide any financing details for his plan, some experts believe it would require significant new Congressional spending.

Ira Stoll, a prominent conservative columnist, tried to make the fiscally conservative case for Trump’s IVF policy in the Wall Street Journal. He argued the proposal would be less expensive than it seems since the costs of low birth rates “far outweigh the costs” of adding IVF to insurance companies. “The roughly $15,000 price of an IVF procedure is nothing compared with the priceless potential of an individual human being,” Stoll added, though existing research suggests IVF would not significantly increase the birth rate.

However, for most conservatives concerned with federal spending and rising deficits, the government mandating taxpayer-funded IVF treatment feels like a bad joke. National Review editor Philip Klein argued that the expensive Trump proposal would amount to a significant expansion of Obamacare and drive up health insurance premiums for all.

Vance Ginn, the chief economist at the Office of Management and Budget during the Trump administration, came out to blast the IVF proposal. “I’m for IVF, as we’ve used it for two of our beautiful kids, but nothing is ‘free,’” he wrote on X. “Can we stop handing out things to win votes like it’s candy when we’re running $2T[rillion] deficits and not abiding by the limited roles outlined in the US Constitution?”

Fiscal conservatives in Congress have also been concerned. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) rejected the free IVF proposal on ABC News, saying there would be “no end” to its cost. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) was more restrained with NBC News. “I’m a little bit hesitant on an insurance mandate. Is there some other way that we could incent[ivize] these sort of coverages through the private sector?” he asked. “We got a lot of things we’ve got to pay for next year by extending the tax provisions.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) opted to be less diplomatic, calling the idea “ridiculous.” The “government has no money,” he said. “We’re $2 trillion in the hole, so I’m not for asking the taxpayer to pay for it.”

Even before his promises for free IVF, fiscal conservatives were growing increasingly frustrated with Trump, as he’s been virtually silent on the mounting federal debt, and issuing new campaign pledges like ending taxes on overtime pay and Social Security benefits, and exempting tips from taxes. Trump’s disregard for deficit spending could turn off some of these budget hawks in November, too.

Will social conservatives stick with Republicans in the future? And will that even matter?

Evangelical voters were a critical part of Trump’s path to victory in 2016, and his campaign in 2020, and most political strategists say he’ll need to earn at least 80 percent of white evangelicals nationally to win in November.

A recent Fox News poll showed him at 75 percent with this group, a number that could sink lower given his recent flip-flops. Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, has been warning — in recent op-eds, speeches, and podcast interviews — that the Republican Party is making a huge mistake by potentially motivating religious voters to stay home. Mohler has been urging Trump to clarify how he’ll restrict abortion in the Oval Office, just as Trump promised evangelicals before that he would work to overturn Roe v. Wade if elected.

Tony Perkins, president of the right-wing Family Research Council, has been making a similar argument that Trump needs to give religious voters something to be genuinely excited about. “It’s just on the margins, but it’s the difference in many elections,” Perkins argued in Politico.

For now there’s no clear survey evidence on whether Evangelicals really are planning to stay home in November, though Lila Rose, a prominent anti-abortion activist, has been urging her followers to withhold their votes unless Trump changes his tune. But Mohler, for his part, said he’s likely to stick with Trump in November because he trusts that Trump will ultimately stack his administration with anti-abortion leaders, regardless of what he says on the campaign trail.

“I have a high degree of confidence that a lot of people in crucial roles in a Trump administration would reflect that pro-life sentiment,” he told the New York Times. “I believe the opposite about a Kamala Harris administration … I have to look at a longer-term strategy. And I think the most responsible pro-life figures in the United States think similarly.”

IVF in particular is popular in the US, with 70 percent of adults supporting access to the treatment. Even among Christian and Republican voters, clear majorities believe IVF access is a good thing.

That’s why, even as Republican lawmakers continue to vote against federal bills to protect access to IVF, they have been publicly stressing their support for the technology. Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate candidate Dave McCormick is running on a $15,000 tax credit for fertility treatment, and in September, a conservative super PAC started funding a major ad campaign in support of IVF.

Public backing for abortion rights also continues to loom over Trump and the Republican Party; polls show voters have grown even more supportive of abortion rights than they were before the Supreme Court overturned Roe. Among women in particular, many say abortion rights are their top issue this November. A recent New York Times poll found that for women under 45, abortion is even more important to them than the economy. Another poll by Galvanize Action showed that 82 percent of white moderate women specifically plan to factor in a candidate’s stance on abortion when voting.

Whether this late-stage gamble by Trump to send mixed messages on reproductive rights pays off is anyone’s guess, but even if it does, the internal fights within the GOP coalition will likely remain — unresolved, festering, and ready to resurface after November.

The anti-abortion movement insists everything is really fine

Originally published at Vox on August 24, 2023.
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The anti-abortion movement is at a political crossroads.

Last year, abortion rights won in all six states with abortion ballot measures, including in red states like Kentucky and Montana that otherwise elected Republican candidates. Earlier this month, activists suffered yet another defeat when Ohio voters cast ballots decisively against a referendum that would have made it harder for constitutional amendments, including an upcoming vote this November on abortion rights, to pass in the future. Abortion was not on the ballot, but anti-abortion groups campaigned heavily in favor of the Ohio measure, and they lost.

Even the Republican presidential primary, which the anti-abortion movement had been planning to dominate, has been something of a mixed bag, and there are signs that the movement’s influence is wavering. During Wednesday night’s GOP debate, Fox News moderator Martha MacCallum argued that “abortion has been a losing issue for Republicans since the Dobbs decision.” A recent New York Times/Siena poll shows that more than a third of Republican primary voters think abortion should be legal all or most of the time, and in a CBS poll this week, most didn’t think it was very important for Republican candidates to talk during the debate about their plans to restrict abortion.

Some candidates, including former Vice President Mike Pence, are still eagerly courting support from the movement, but others appear less willing to take their campaign cues from those anti-abortion organizations.

Donald Trump, for example, has resisted calls from the leading activist group, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, to endorse a national 15-week ban on abortion. He’s also refused to say if he supports the type of six-week abortion ban that Gov. Ron DeSantis signed in Florida. Trump would say, however, that “many people within the pro-life movement feel that that was too harsh.”

And when DeSantis was dismissive of federal abortion restrictions in late July, saying he believed the anti-abortion movement would see more success from states and local communities, SBA Pro-Life America criticized his stance as “unacceptable.” DeSantis’s campaign didn’t seem to care, countering that the governor “does not kowtow to D.C. interest groups.”

Does that mean the anti-abortion movement is planning to rethink its own aggressive post-Roe strategy of trying to limit abortion as much as possible in as many places as possible? For now, the answer is broadly no. Instead, leaders argue that any losses they’ve suffered over the last year have not been because their agenda is unpopular, but because it hasn’t been pursued boldly and strategically enough. If anything, they say, winning will require an even stronger commitment to restricting abortion.

GOP presidential candidates are divided on federal abortion bans

Leading groups opposing abortion rights are divided on what they want to hear from federal candidates.

SBA Pro-Life America has said it will not support anyone who does not express at least a commitment to restricting abortion at the federal level after 15 weeks. Meanwhile Students for Life made clear that they oppose such a 15-week litmus test, given that more than 90 percent of abortions occur within the first 13 weeks. Instead, they asked each candidate to lay out their proactive vision for a post-Roe America, and emphasized that their own blueprint includes granting legal protections to unborn children, defunding Planned Parenthood, banning the distribution of medication abortion by mail, and reimposing other restrictions on abortion pills that were relaxed under the Biden administration.

During the first GOP primary debate, however, most candidates declined to do any of these things, and appeared divided on whether the federal government should limit abortion at all. DeSantis dodged a question on whether he’d support a six-week ban, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley stressed the fact that there’s little chance of getting something through Congress, and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum claimed a federal ban would violate the 10th Amendment of the US Constitution. Of the eight candidates on stage, only Pence and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott backed a 15-week restriction.

Yet while some GOP political consultants quietly worry about electoral backlash to abortion bans that voters consider too extreme, anti-abortion groups have urged candidates to stay the course, and to champion the post-Roe successes the movement has achieved so far.

“A year after Dobbs, 25 states have put pro-life protections into law — half the country,” SBA Pro-Life America stated after the Ohio election. Rejecting the idea that abortion rights were helpful to Democrats in 2022, they touted the midterm wins of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, North Carolina Sen. Ted Budd, and Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance. Catherine Glenn Foster, president of Americans United for Life, offered a similar rosy post-midterms reflection, noting that public officials who backed or enforced abortion restrictions were reelected in nearly 20 states. “Democrats didn’t crack state governor, state attorney general, or state house seats in red states that have enforced abortion limits since [Dobbs],” she argued.

The movement against abortion rights isn’t admitting defeat

While the attempt to make it harder to pass ballot measures — known as Issue 1 — lost by 14 percentage points in Ohio, anti-abortion groups say that does not mean they’ll face a similar fate when abortion is actually on the ballot in November. The proposed Ohio amendment would restore the right to an abortion up to the point of fetal viability, and permit abortions beyond that point if a patient’s doctor deems it necessary to protect their life or health.

In their post-mortem memo, SBA Pro-Life America said they lost for two reasons: they didn’t start their campaign against Issue 1 early enough, and some voters were motivated to vote no because of concerns about democracy and other policies, like the minimum wage or legalizing marijuana. The group claims it does not see support for abortion rights as a key reason for Issue 1’s failure.

Anti-abortion groups have also blasted Republican elected officials and business leaders for not campaigning hard enough. “The silence of the establishment and business community in Ohio left a vacuum that was too large to overcome,” SBA Pro-Life America argued. “So long as the Republicans and their supporters take the ostrich strategy and bury their heads in the sand, they will lose again and again.”

Terry Schilling, leader of the conservative American Principles Project, likewise slammed GOP donors for not spending heavily enough on the Ohio election, and he blamed Republican presidential candidates and national party leaders for downplaying its importance. Another national anti-abortion group, Students for Life, made similar arguments, noting that being outspent by opponents almost 5 to 1 “certainly helped create the confusion about what was at stake.”

While groups supporting abortion rights frame the Ohio results as a clear-cut victory for their cause, election analysts caution we don’t yet fully understand who voted for Issue 1 and why, and it is possible that voters who cast their ballot against the Issue 1 referendum in August will also vote against expanding abortion restrictions in November.

Students for Life has recently launched a “3-step plan” for defeating the abortion rights amendment, largely by mobilizing youth voters. The group is arguing that voters in states like Kansas are experiencing “buyer’s remorse” for approving a state constitutional amendment for abortion rights last year, and they claim they’ll dissuade Ohioans from making the same mistake. When asked for evidence of such remorse, spokesperson Kristi Hamrick told Vox it’s based on her group’s “lived experience [and] talking with people on the ground.”

Early polls on the November amendment bode well for abortion rights supporters; one from June found nearly 60 percent of Ohioans support the idea of an amendment for reproductive freedom. But political researchers say it’s generally harder for affirmative ballot measures to pass, given what’s known as a “status quo bias.” To pass the Ohio amendment, advocates may copy the playbook from Michigan, where abortion rights activists framed their winning 2022 ballot measure around the idea of restoring the rights of Roe v. Wade — bringing back the reality Americans had known for five decades. Opponents, meanwhile, will claim activists are trying to radically expand rights.

Anti-abortion leaders are already running with this strategy, claiming that Ohio’s proposed abortion rights amendment’s language is so broad that it would create a new right to gender-affirming surgery, and therefore invalidate the state’s requirement for parental consent.

In its post-mortem memo, SBA Pro-Life America argued that advocates in Ohio must stick with “a simple message,” framing the upcoming referendum as “an attempt by ACLU to eliminate parental rights and legalize abortion on demand in the Ohio constitution.” The amendment would only permit abortions past the point of fetal viability to protect a patient’s life or health, but SBA Pro-Life America is urging advocates to claim it will “legalize unrestricted access to abortion until the moment of birth, paid for by Ohio taxpayers.”

Anti-abortion groups note that the ACLU has long opposed parental consent laws, and an ACLU Ohio lawyer in February said existing laws that conflict with a constitutional amendment “should not be enforced.” Still, Ohio case law generally requires parental consent for youth medical care, and the amendment could only affect parental consent laws if someone were to successfully challenge the rules in court as unconstitutional. Given that Ohio’s state Supreme Court is controlled by Republicans, legal experts think a more sweeping interpretation of the abortion rights measure is unlikely. Andrew Everett, an ACLU spokesperson, told Vox in July they “have no plans to challenge parental consent laws in Ohio.”

Even the most unapologetic anti-abortion groups recognize they need to work on the movement’s image

While leading national groups insist there’s no real proof candidates should back away from abortion restrictions, activists are talking more about the need to speak more compassionately to the needs of mothers and children — driven partly by media coverage showing pregnant women and new mothers have suffered under new anti-abortion laws.

SBA Pro-Life America urged lawmakers to support legislation that requires child support payments to begin when a fetus is in the womb, and to expand the child tax credit and parental leave support. Students for Life similarly emphasized the need to better support pregnant moms and parents on campuses. Route Fifty reported that at least four states have approved new tax exemptions for pregnant people and anti-abortion centers, and nearly a dozen more are considering them.

A few dissenting voices in the anti-abortion movement have recently urged more compromise. Schilling, of the American Principles Project, said candidates should stick with 15-week bans that allow for exceptions for rape, incest, and protecting the life of the mother. “Abortion limits need to be reasonable and popular,” he told Politico. “15 weeks, build a genuine culture of life, revisit,” echoed Duncan Braid, a staffer at the conservative think tank American Compass.

But for now these are minority voices, and the anti-abortion movement is broadly urging lawmakers to get bolder, lest they meet the same electoral fate as failed Republican Senate candidates Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and Adam Laxalt in Nevada — who SBA Pro-Life America claim ran from abortion in their midterm races and subsequently lost. “Going on offense is essential for any candidate who wants to win in 2024,” said the group’s president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, at the conclusion of Wednesday’s debate.