Nearly 9 in 10 Voters Say IVF Should Be Legal
The overwhelming majority of American voters — 86 percent — support keeping in vitro fertilization legal, according to a new CBS News/YouGov poll.
The poll was conducted Feb. 28 – Mar. 1 in the wake of an Alabama Supreme Court ruling that declared the practice illegal because the court deemed IVF embryos are “extrauterine children,” and therefore people under the law. Hospitals and fertility clinics in the state have shut down IVF treatments because they fear prosecution.
Although Trump and some Republican lawmakers have said they support IVF after the decision came out, even speaking about their personal experiences with it, they have failed to take meaningful action to protect access and have failed to say whether they believe embryos should be considered people under the law.
In fact, 125 Republicans in the House have sponsored the Life at Conception Act, introduced in Jan. 2023, that would define a “human being” to be “all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization, cloning, or other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being.” The House bill does not make an exception for IVF, although a Senate version does.
When Democrats tried passing with unanimous consent a bill that would protect IVF access across the country last week, Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith blocked it, saying, “The bill before us today is a vast overreach that is full of poison pills that go way too far.”
This was the second time Hyde-Smith singlehandedly blocked that piece of legislation, the Access to Family Building Act, which was introduced by Democratic Sens. Tammy Duckworth and Patty Murray. The first time was in 2022.
The CBS News/YouGov poll also asked whether Donald Trump was responsible for the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade’s abortion protections. Registered voters appear to be split on the question. Almost one in five gave Trump credit, while a third of voters said he was to blame. Forty-eight percent said Trump was neither responsible nor to blame.
Democrats say they are not giving up on protecting reproductive rights. “We trust women to make decisions about their own reproductive health care,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, told reporters, according to CBS News. “And the IVF dilemma for Republicans is they are down a path that is not only unpopular, it’s untenable as a matter of constitutional law and basic moral imperative, and we’re gonna pursue it vigorously.”
“They aren’t going to just stop in Alabama. Mark my words, if we don’t act now, it will only get worse,” Duckworth said on Tuesday.
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