Recently the Alabama Supreme Court, with their Christian Nationalist Chief Justice Tom Parker, ruled that frozen embryos are literal children. I was listening to a report on the radio and heard a woman say something along the lines of, “I never imagined they’d come after in vitro fertilization.”
I literally yelled at my phone, “THEN YOU HAVEN’T BEEN PAYING ATTENTION!”
I’ve been writing this column for a very long time. I honestly can’t remember when I started. 2005, give or take a year. My point is I’ve been following right-wing politics for decades and ALL SIGNS POINTED TO THIS.
In fact, all signs point to this not being done. They want to ban birth control and divorce, too. For all of the years conservatives screamed and cried that gays and lesbians were trying to redefine marriage as we know it, in reality, it was conservatives themselves who sought to do the redefining. They have no respect for women (and even less for transgender or non-binary people) and, frankly, think that wives submitting to their husbands is how things should be, damn it.
It blows my mind that even after the Supreme Court, stacked with extremist conservatives, overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the right to abortion for millions of people nationwide in the blink of an eye, there are still people who underestimate how far these people will go.
As Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) tweeted, “First Republicans banned abortions so women couldn’t terminate a pregnancy. Now they are coming for IVF so women can’t begin a pregnancy. The GOP agenda is about one thing: government control of women.”
I don’t think it’s fair to say that the GOP is about only one thing. They are also about making rich people richer and telling everyone else to go fuck themselves.
Minutes later, in another tweet, Murphy wrote, “Newsflash: no matter what they tell their candidates to pretend, when they get power, they use it to control women.”
A good point, Sen. Murphy! Because ever since the Alabama ruling, Republicans have been trying to distance themselves from it, claiming that they support IVF and just can’t BELIEVE that the Alabama Supreme Court would do such a thing.
This is the party that has been trying to pass “personhood” laws across the country to give legal rights to fertilized eggs and put women in prison for having miscarriages. This is the party that is trying to ban abortion in all forms across the country since the fall of Roe.
And this is the party that will, not might, WILL enact a total abortion ban nationwide if they get control of the federal government again. And they’ve clearly shown they won’t stop there.
LGBTQ+ people have been shouting from the rooftops for decades about how dangerous right-wing conservatives are, especially the ones who use religion as an excuse as to why they just have to be really mean to the gays who want to get married or to transgender people who need to use a public restroom. Because God told them to and, by golly, it’s their religious rights being trampled on if they couldn’t legally discriminate against the folks they don’t like.
On Feb. 23, disgraced former president Donald Trump posted on Truth Social, “Under my leadership, the Republican Party will always support the creation of strong, thriving, healthy American families. We want to make it easier for mothers and fathers to have babies, not harder! That includes supporting the availability of fertility treatments like IVF in every State in America. Like the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of Americans, including the VAST MAJORITY of Republicans, Conservatives, Christians, and Pro-Life Americans, I strongly support the availability of IVF for couples who are trying to have a precious baby.”
This is total bullshit, of course. Anyone who takes Trump’s word for anything should be ashamed of themselves.
It’s also worth noting that it isn’t just “mothers and fathers” who use IVF to have children. It’s a very common way that lesbians, single people, and others who do not fit inside of the narrow binary of who is considered “male” and “female” (and, truly, who is considered human) by conservatives.
You can be sure that even if IVF does stay available under a federal government run by Republicans — and that’s a big IF. Remember that such a government would be very busily appointing anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+, Christian nationalist judges who they can count on to uphold the heinous laws conservatives want to pass — there is little doubt that IVF services would no longer be available to anyone outside of marriage that isn’t a cisgender man and a cisgender woman.
Sometimes it sucks to be right. And by “right” I mean “correct.” Because the right truly sucks. They want ironclad control over every uterus in the nation. And you don’t have to take my word for it. They’re telling you themselves every day.