Republicans are rushing to defend IVF. The anti-abortion movement hopes to change their minds.

Anti-abortion advocates worked for five decades to topple Roe v. Wade. They’re now laying the groundwork for a yearslong fight to curb in vitro fertilization.

Since the Alabama Supreme Court ruled last month that frozen embryos are children, the Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups have been strategizing how to convince not just GOP officials but evangelicals broadly that they should have serious moral concerns about fertility treatments like IVF and that access to them should be curtailed.

In short, they want to re-run the Roe playbook.

They plan to appeal to evangelical denominations and their leaders to take a firm stance that IVF as practiced in the U.S. destroys human life. That, they hope, will reshape how conservative Christians — and in turn, the officials they elect — view the issue, just as it did on abortion. Ultimately, it could lead to laws that create a patchwork of IVF access in the United States, where the procedure is more accessible in liberal states and more limited in conservative ones.

“We’re at a junction where we could see a similar generational shift — where people begin to consider reproductive technologies not as a separate but as a part of their cohesive pro-life framework,” said Emma Waters, a senior research associate at the Heritage Foundation. “Many of these pro-life Republicans are going to have to think more deeply about what it means to be pro-life.”

Achieving those goals is no easy task. IVF is broadly popular, according to public polling, in a way abortion never was. But a plan is already in motion to chip away at that support.

Organizations including Heritage, former Vice President Mike Pence’s group Advancing American Freedom, and the Southern Baptist Convention’s public advocacy-focused Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission have worked behind the scenes over the last few weeks to distribute talking points, circulate policy recommendations and educate Republican officials and their staff about their ethical concerns with how IVF is commonly practiced in the United States.

The groups are not advocating banning IVF but want new restrictions that would significantly curtail access to the procedure, such as imposing more regulations on fertility clinics, limiting the number of embryos that can be created or transferred to the uterus at one time, and banning pre-implantation genetic testing, which they argue allows parents to discriminate against their embryos on the basis of sex, disabilities like Down Syndrome or other factors.

At the same time, they have been having conversations within their conservative Christian circles that have revealed how much work they need to do to convince evangelicals that there are ethical problems with the procedure. Most evangelical denominations have not taken firm stances on restricting fertility services like IVF.

The organizations have been frustrated with GOP lawmakers’ recent rush to introduce bills creating broad protections for IVF. Legislators have also distanced themselves from — and in some cases killed — legislation giving embryos the same rights as people, policies they had supported until the Alabama ruling sparked a national firestorm over the legality and ethics of IVF.

But those setbacks have solidified their resolve and convinced them that while they may lose the battle, they can still win the war.

Those pushing to restrict IVF hope the groundwork the anti-abortion movement laid over the last 50 years will make it easier to persuade evangelicals to support these policies, and they’re recycling some of the messaging, including linking certain IVF practices with eugenics and calling the fertility industry “dangerous” and “unregulated.”

“This is not just about educating people on Capitol Hill. It’s about even educating our own members who don’t have well-formed views on this topic,” said Hannah Daniel, director of public policy at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. “It took a really long time to get to where we are now, and it’s going to require persistent work both on the legislation front but also informing the hearts and minds of Americans on this topic to truly see life as valuable regardless of that person’s ability, regardless of their stage of development, regardless of their gender.”

‘Most dispiriting’

Lawmakers have, by and large, been reluctant to heed the movement’s calls as they stare down an election and polling numbers that show IVF is overwhelmingly popular with Americans. A CBS News/YouGov poll earlier this month found that 86 percent of respondents thought IVF should be legal, and a survey released in December by a firm run by Kellyanne Conway, former President Donald Trump’s former senior counselor and campaign manager, found that IVF had 78 percent support among self-identified “pro-life advocates” and 83 percent among evangelical Christians.

Even House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Southern Baptist who served as a trustee of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, has recently stressed his support for IVF and declined to say if the destruction of unused embryos is murder. He also stated earlier in March that he doesn’t see a role for Congress in regulating IVF services and prefers leaving the issue to the states.

“If Mike Johnson — who is dyed-in-the-wool Southern Baptist — is pro-IVF, that just goes to show you the deficit that individuals like myself are working within,” said Andrew Walker, associate professor of Christian ethics and public theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. “That’s what I think has been most dispiriting — watching Republicans run from this. They’re the most pro-life party and yet they’re unwilling to bring their own principles to their logical conclusion.”

In fact, Republican-controlled legislatures in eight states have stalled or killed legislation introduced prior to the Alabama decision that would have granted personhood rights to embryos. In Iowa, a state senator facing a tough reelection bid in a suburban swing district scuttled legislation he said needed more work. In Kentucky, GOP lawmakers earlier this month approved legislation shielding certain doctors from criminal and civil liability, which they say will protect access to IVF services. And in Kansas, a GOP-led Senate committee recently introduced a bill saying embryos outside the uterus are not unborn children or human beings.

In Congress, four Republicans running for re-election in competitive seats have signed onto a bill from Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.) that would create broad federal protections for IVF — and more swing district GOP members may do so as Democratic campaign groups signal they will attack them on IVF between now and November.

Rep. Mike Carey (R-Ohio) is working on legislation to expand access to IVF for people who can’t afford the procedure, while Reps. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), Michelle Steel (R-Calif.), Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.), and Juan Ciscomani (R-Ariz.) have put forward non-binding resolutions declaring unqualified support for IVF.

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and other anti-abortion groups have attacked those measures as taking an “anything goes approach” that “leaves no room for reasonable laws” that restrict the discarding of embryos.

“We can't offer a get-out-of-regulation free card to the IVF industry,” said Kristi Hamrick, the head of federal policy for Students for Life of America, which will score a vote on the pro-IVF measures the way they score abortion-related bills. Other anti-abortion groups are already attacking GOP lawmakers who voted for IVF protections with language and imagery they have long used to attack Democrats on abortion.

Abortion-rights groups welcome the focus on IVF because they believe it will hurt Republicans at the polls. Angela Vasquez-Giroux, vice president of communications and research at Reproductive Freedom for All, said that before the fall of Roe anti-abortion groups were able to make their case without having to deal with immediate consequences of their policy positions — something that won’t be true of a push against IVF.

“Republicans keep asking questions about, when is it okay for us to be in charge of your reproductive health? Or, when can we be the people who decide how you build your family?” Vasquez-Giroux said. “Voters are very clearly saying ‘never,’ and until they’re willing to hear that answer, they’re going to keep losing — which is obviously fine by me.”

‘Shades of moral gray’

The anti-abortion movement’s short-term goal is to calm Republicans’ political panic and prevent any legislation they see as harmful to their long-term effort, like the bill Alabama GOP lawmakers approved earlier this month that provides civil and criminal immunity to IVF providers for any death or damage to embryos. Long-term, they would like to not only regulate IVF but also other reproductive technologies not yet in use, like in vitro gametogenesis and artificial wombs.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said he expects the panic to subside and for lawmakers to eventually embrace restrictions on IVF, such as “you're limited to the creation of three embryos, as opposed to a dozen or whatever.”

There are early signs that their message is getting through to some Republicans. The Republican Study Committee — a group comprising the majority of House GOP members — released a budget that includes language advocating for protections “at all stages of life,” with no carveout for embryos fertilized through IVF.

Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) last week spearheaded a letter signed by three of his GOP colleagues to the Department of Veterans Affairs calling IVF “morally dubious” and saying that current IVF practice results in embryos being “abandoned, or cruelly discarded.” And Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) introduced a resolution that praises IVF but also calls for “state legislative and regulatory actions to establish health, safety, and ethical standards for medical facilities offering assisted reproductive technologies.”

Some states are also moving in the advocates’ preferred direction. In Kansas, the state House on Wednesday approved legislation allowing courts to issue child support orders from the moment of conception.

“There’s no question there were people running for the hills at first and in a panic mode,” said Bob Heckman, a Republican strategist who works with anti-abortion organizations. “But that seems to be dying down, and I think there’s genuine, real desire to figure out what’s the best way to do this.”

Still, there are reasons to suspect that changing the national discourse on IVF — even over a generation — will be much tougher than the fight to end abortion rights. Opposing abortion served as a sort of release valve for evangelicals in the era of the Moral Majority and conservative social panic about the rise of the women's and gay rights movements in a way anti-abortion advocates acknowledge IVF doesn’t today.

“Abortion is synonymous with destruction. IVF is synonymous with the possibility of life and family,” said Walker, who is debating bringing a resolution on IVF at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting this summer. “There’s a bumper sticker that says, ‘Abortion stops the beating heart.’ For IVF, it would need to say something to the effect of, ‘Don’t freeze your neighbor.’ It’s not as visceral.”

Complicating matters, the Catholic Church and a growing number of evangelicals, like Walker, believe all IVF is wrong because it separates conception from the sexual act between husband and wife. It’s a theological position even some conservative evangelical denominations may consider a bridge too far.

“My position is an extreme minority. I do think the likely position that a lot of individuals will land on — and I think, hypothetically, where Republicans could land on — is tighter regulations,” Walker said. “We’re not immediately speaking in terms of moral black and white. IVF is far more in shades of moral gray. There’s a higher degree of moral sophistication in explaining the problems with IVF than there is with abortion.”

Mary Ziegler, a professor of law at the University of California, Davis and the author of several books about abortion, doubts whether advocates will have the patience to take the same approach with IVF that they did with abortion 50 years ago.

“Incrementalism, which used to be the byword for smart anti-abortion strategy, has become a dirty word,” Ziegler said. “It’s unclear if the movement will have the patience to play the long game in the same way because the expectations and demands have come to feel very different.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misidentified the head of federal policy for Students for Life of America. She is Kristi Hamrick.