‘License to kill’: Anti-abortion groups rage against the GOP

The anti-abortion movement is turning on Republican lawmakers who support bills to protect in vitro fertilization, accusing them of sanctioning murder.

As many politicians raced in recent weeks to get to the right side of public opinion on IVF, some of the country’s biggest and most influential anti-abortion groups are pushing back.

Several have attacked state and federal lawmakers — who introduced legislation to protect IVF after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled last month that frozen embryos are children — for giving doctors a “license to kill” and said legislators’ efforts would result in “thousands of dead human beings.”

Other groups are going further, running ads against longstanding GOP allies that use the same graphic imagery — blood, babies and scalpels — they have long deployed to oppose Democrats and the abortion-rights movement.

The tension over IVF underscores a deepening divide as Republicans grapple with new political and policy consequences of passing laws declaring that life begins at conception. After marching in lockstep for decades against Roe v. Wade, conservatives are clashing in the post-Roe era over what it means to be “pro-life.”

The split mirrors debates between Republicans and the anti-abortion movement over other popular policies, including exceptions from state abortion bans for rape and incest, and protections for contraception. That — and the unwillingness of many GOP candidates to talk about abortion on the campaign trail — has some in the anti-abortion movement accusing Republicans of caving to political pressure.

“For a lot of conservative Republican lawmakers, being against abortion has served as a kind of lazy way to say that you’re a conservative,” said Jameson Taylor, director of policy and legislative affairs for the Mississippi-based American Family Association Action. “Frankly, a lot of Republican lawmakers are not in touch with conservative principles because they have not taken sufficient time to think through what those principles are.”

In Alabama, the anti-abortion movement resoundingly condemned a bill shielding IVF providers from criminal and civil charges, and pressured GOP Gov. Kay Ivey to veto it. When she signed it anyway, one anti-abortion organization said the new law “disrespects human life and strips human beings of their dignity,” and another ran digital ads against Ivey and Republican lawmakers using graphic imagery and accusing them of “[betraying] life.”

“Politicians cannot call themselves pro-life, affirm the truth that human life begins at the moment of fertilization and then enact laws that allow the callous killing of these preborn children simply because they were created through IVF,” Live Action president Lila Rose said after Alabama Republicans approved the legislation.

A spokesperson for Ivey did not directly respond when asked about the group’s comments that the governor had given doctors a “license to kill.” Instead, the spokesperson pointed back to a statement the governor issued after signing the legislation, in which Ivey reiterated her support for IVF, lauded legislators for “quickly tackling” the issue and touted Alabama as a “pro-life, pro-family state.”

In Mississippi, the anti-abortion movement and its GOP allies have called a Republican-backed proposal to protect IVF the “greatest assault on the cause of life that we’ve seen in Mississippi in a long time” and warned that the “bad Democrat-based bill” would lead to “backdoor abortion and possible cloning and selling of ‘genetic materials of humans.’”

Lawmakers in Kentucky and Missouri who have introduced similar bills are also getting pushback from local conservative groups who see the legislation as an end-run around the state’s abortion restrictions.

Some Republicans dismiss the criticism, arguing that protecting IVF is a “pro-life” position.

“I’ve had some negative comments from extreme pro-life type folks,” said Missouri state Rep. Bill Allen, a Republican who has introduced pro-IVF legislation. “But I’m pro-life. This is bringing life into the world. I think there’s something to be said for that.”

In Congress, anti-abortion groups are vowing to penalize GOP members if they support pro-IVF bills they believe go too far, including a nonbinding resolution introduced by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) earlier this month. And speakers, including the head of the influential Heritage Foundation, told activists at a recent anti-abortion summit in Washington, D.C., that Republicans have proved themselves "a fickle ally in the fight for the unborn” since the Dobbs decision, and can’t be relied upon to advance their agenda.

"Republicans — those who claim to be pro-life — have to be consistent in that viewpoint, and not run from that conversation,” Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, told POLITICO.

Yet the divide over IVF does not mean anti-abortion groups are breaking with the GOP entirely. This week, leaders of two of the country’s biggest groups — Susan B. Anthony List and March for Life — will attend House Republicans’ annual policy retreat. And even the groups most upset over the wave of pro-IVF legislation won’t commit to primarying the bills’ supporters, telling POLITICO they’d rather “educate” them on the issue.

Still, many anti-abortion advocates are stressing to lawmakers that blanket support for IVF, which recent polling shows is supported by 86 percent of voters, is not a nuanced “pro-life” position, arguing that the state and federal bills introduced to protect fertility care amount to “a get-out-of-regulation-free card.”

Instead, they want lawmakers to seize the moment created by the Alabama decision to impose restrictions on the way IVF is commonly practiced in the U.S. — in which excess fertilized embryos are created to ensure the best chance of a successful pregnancy after which unused embryos are often destroyed.

“Saying that you support IVF doesn't mean anything unless we talk about what IVF is,” said Kristi Hamrick, chief policy strategist for Students for Life of America. “Do you support allowing a clinic that allows another patient to wander back and destroy embryos to go without any sanctions? Do you support allowing a disreputable doctor who uses his own sperm to fertilize most of the women’s eggs in the facility — that person shouldn't experience any repercussions? What exactly are you saying you support?”

Most GOP lawmakers are ducking those questions as they instead push legislation to broadly protect access to the procedure in states like Kentucky, Mississippi and Missouri. Legislators in those states said they are open to a longer-term conversation about changes to the IVF process, but that their short-term concern is ensuring that access is unimpeded.

“I personally have concerns about discarding embryos. I believe that is the destruction of life,” said Kentucky state Sen. Whitney Westerfield, a Republican, who has introduced legislation to protect IVF access. His son and the triplets his wife is pregnant with are the product of adopted embryos another family did not use. “But I don’t want to create a weird incentive structure to reduce the use of IVF or to limit the opportunity for kids like mine to be born.”

Still, some Republicans lawmakers are heeding the anti-abortion movement’s concerns. In Iowa, House GOP lawmakers voted last week to advance legislation that would give embryos and fetuses personhood rights, despite concerns from Democrats and others that the legislation would hamper IVF access. And GOP lawmakers in Tennessee recently rejected legislation proposed by their Democratic colleagues to protect IVF access, saying that such legislation was unnecessary.

Even the Alabama Legislature watered down its original proposal, which would have carved out embryos created during the IVF process but not implanted into the uterus from the definition of “human life.”

“They’re not unafraid of the anti-abortion movement,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, who specializes in abortion rights. “If they were, this bill would have looked different.”

As the debate rages at the state and national levels, Perkins and other anti-abortion leaders say they’re hopeful, despite recent setbacks, that the conversation ignited by the Alabama ruling will eventually lead to more restrictions on IVF.

“The silver lining here is that it's drawing attention to something that hasn't gotten a lot of attention,” he said. “More policymakers will begin to look at this and say, ‘Hey, you know? That this is something that really does need some oversight.’ I think they'll wind up in a place different than the Alabama Legislature.”