First abortion, then IVF… and now birth control?

Man, one thing you can depend on Republicans for is that if you give them a shovel, they will just keep on digging.  Last week the Alabama Supreme Court did Republicans the favor (not!) of putting in vitro fertilization on the ballot for 2024. Two years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court did their Republican handlers the favor (not!) of putting abortion on the ballot by overturning of Roe v Wade.  Now Democrats will be able to use access to contraception as another issue to pound Republicans with, given the results of a new poll that shows how hugely unpopular Republican opposition to contraception is.

Republicans have been suffering on the issue of abortion already, losing several special elections to Democrats pushing the issue.  It’s a no-brainer.  Democrats have turned the Supreme Court decision on Roe to their advantage every chance they’ve gotten.  And why not?  According to Pew Research Center, 61 percent of Americans say abortion should be legal in most cases.  With restrictions on abortion on the ballot in states both red and blue across the nation, emphasizing a woman’s right to control her own body has been a winner every time Democrats have pushed it.

The Alabama IVF decision is cream in the coffee of Democrats running for office everywhere. The state’s Supreme Court, in a ruling one judge joined with a concurrence dripping with references to Bible verses and Christian theologians, found that embryos, even frozen embryos, are legally “children” and thus subject to laws forbidding abuse and murder if they are accidentally or purposefully destroyed. 

Polling on the issue of fertilization treatments is even worse for Republicans than abortion. A memo to the National Republican Senatorial Committee from pollster Kellyanne Conway, who was an aide in the Trump White House, revealed that “a staggering 85% of all respondents, including 86% of women, support increasing access to fertility-related procedures and services.”  A poll last year by Pew showed that 42 percent of Americans have either used IVF or know someone who did.

Too bad Kellyanne wasn’t around in 2022 when 125 House Republicans sponsored a bill called the “Life at Conception Act,” which defines a “human being” to include “the moment of fertilization or cloning, or other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being.”  The bill would recognize such “human beings” as protected by the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution “for the right to life of each born and preborn human person.”

If you take your Republican shovel and dig even an inch into that language, you will find a law mirroring the Alabama Supreme Court decision that essentially made in vitro fertilization illegal, because during the procedure, some fertilized eggs are either discarded or otherwise destroyed.  And while Alabama’s Republican attorney general scrambled to assure the public that his office doesn’t plan to prosecute prospective parents or physicians, multiple IVF clinics have already shut down the procedure in Alabama following its Supreme Court decision, causing panic among couples in the middle of IVF treatments that were suddenly stopped.

The Life at Conception Act, if it were to become law, would have the effect of ending in vitro fertilization everywhere in the country, for the same reason IVF clinics were closed in Alabama.

And now comes a poll from Americans for Contraception to remind everyone that 195 House Republicans voted against a bill proposed by Democrats that would protect the right of all Americans to access contraception without the hand of the government tapping them on the shoulder and shaking a finger in their faces.  According to the New York Times, the poll “found that most voters across the political spectrum believe their access to birth control is actively at risk, and that 80 percent of voters said that protecting access to contraception was ‘deeply important’ to them. Even among Republican voters, 72 percent said they had a favorable view of birth control.”

Americans have had a Constitutional right to contraception since the Griswold v. Connecticut decision in 1965.  Anti-abortion right-wingers have had their eye on Griswold for decades, and Clarence Thomas gave them hope for a reconsideration of the right to contraception in his concurring opinion to the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. Thomas also said same-sex marriage “should be reconsidered” in the same concurrence, so there you go – another Republican with another shovel who just won’t stop digging.  Some 70 percent of Americans approve of same-sex marriage at this point.

Have Republicans just lost their minds?  Is it that the three issues – abortion, fertility treatments, and contraception – are all about fundamentalist Christian faith and its stiff-collared view of morality?  Or is it something else, like…uh…I don’t know…a cynical play for the votes of evangelicals? Republicans have been promising right-wing Christians to deliver on their dream of a theocratic state for decades, and they’re still promising.  At the CPAC gathering in Maryland last weekend, Jack Posobiec got up in front of the cheering crowd and announced, “Welcome to the end of democracy. We’re here to overthrow democracy completely,” he continued. “We didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this right here.” He then held up a necklace featuring a large Christian cross.  “All glory is not to government, all glory to God.” Shouts of “amen” arose from the audience.

Posobiec was one of the original nutcases behind the whole Pizzagate conspiracy that alleged that Democrats were running a child trafficking ring right out of the basement of a pizza joint in Washington, D.C., a conspiracy theory that is still being pushed out there, by the way.

It's hard to believe I’m sitting here in 2024 writing a story with the word contraception in it. I was in high school, and condoms were sold from behind the pharmacist counter in drug stores when Griswold was decided. Is that really how far back Republicans want to take us?

Democrats should get out there on the stump starting tomorrow and clobber Republicans with every one of these insanely reactionary issues, and I’m talking to you, President Biden.  Let’s help Republicans dig their hole, all those signatories to the “Life at Conception Act,” including Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, and the Republicans who voted against the right to contraception, again including Speaker Johnson and Jim Jordan and James Comer.  When they get it deep enough, let’s shovel dirt in there on top of them with our votes.