After Alabama Ruling, Republicans Scramble to Embrace IVF
Plus: How far will Nikki go?
Some shocking—shocking, we say—news from CNN yesterday: “Kenneth Chesebro, the right-wing attorney who helped devise the Trump campaign’s fake electors plot in 2020, concealed a secret Twitter account from Michigan prosecutors, hiding dozens of damning posts that undercut his statements to investigators about his role in the election subversion scheme, a CNN KFile investigation has found.”
Also, the federal government (partially) shuts down in four days.
Happy Tuesday.
Republicans: We Love IVF!
Two years after Dobbs v. Jackson, Republicans are already losing the political fight over abortion access badly enough. So you can imagine how veins bulged and eyes popped as the news flashed across screens at the RNC and NRSC last week that the Alabama Supreme Court had ruled that frozen embryos could be considered children under Alabama state law, throwing widely used fertility treatments like in vitro fertilization into unexpected legal jeopardy.
Republicans quickly rallied to IVF’s defense.
“We want to make it easier for mothers and fathers to have babies, not harder!” Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social. “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.” House Speaker Mike Johnson called IVF “a blessing for many moms and dads who have struggled with fertility.”
And the NRSC sent an unambiguous message to its Senate candidates with a memo emphasizing this was not a fight they wanted to pick. “When responding to the Alabama Supreme Court ruling, it is imperative that our candidates align with the public’s overwhelming support for IVF and fertility treatments,” the memo stated, with flinty don’t-screw-this-up intensity.
The problem, as Mona Charen points out on the site today, is that this pro-IVF stance is at least partially in tension with the “life begins at conception” stance that has long undergirded many Republicans’ opposition to legal abortion. She writes:
In the last Congress, more than 160 House Republicans, including Johnson, cosponsored H.R. 1011, the “Life at Conception Act,” which extends Fourteenth Amendment protections to include “preborn human person[s],” declaring “that the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution is vested in each human being at all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization, cloning [sic], or other moment at which an individual comes into being.”
Republicans have also marched in lockstep to oppose the Right to Contraception Act introduced by Democrats because it would have included methods, such as IUDs and the morning-after pill, that some consider abortifacients. It’s hard to square support for IVF, which, as practiced in the United States, nearly always entails the loss of fertilized eggs, with opposition to Plan B because it may result in the loss of a fertilized egg.
Democrats have been happy to make the same case. The White House on Monday circulated a memo from press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre denouncing Johnson’s support for the Life at Conception Act, which she called “an extreme, dangerous bill that would eliminate reproductive freedom for all women in every state.”
“Republican officials think they can obfuscate their way out of their support for these extreme policies. But spin is not a time machine,” Jean-Pierre wrote. “Their agenda is clear, they’re just worried it’s not popular.”
Within the pro-life movement, some who hold that life begins at conception have long been deeply uneasy with IVF, which in typical practice results in the creation of a number of surplus embryos that will never be implanted. In their own lives, many go out of their way to avoid that route: looking into adoption instead, or taking the slower, more expensive path of fertilizing and implanting only a single embryo at a time.
But Trump is right: This is a position held only by a fraction even of the subset of Americans who oppose legal abortion. Before Dobbs, it was easy for the GOP to let the pro-life movement take the lead when it came to setting their abortion-policy agenda—after all, none of that policy was ever going to become law. Expect more and more daylight between party and movement in the months and years ahead.
—Andrew Egger
How Far Will Nikki Go?
At 3:52 p.m. yesterday, I received a surprisingly interesting fundraising email from Nikki Haley’s campaign manager, Betsy Ankney.
“We all know the odds, but we also know the stakes,” the memo begins. “And we are FIRED up! That’s why today, we fight on!”
It continues:
What we saw during Saturday’s primary election was South Carolina’s frustration with our country’s direction.
It’s what Americans are feeling across the country.
We’ve seen that a large number of voters in Republican primaries want an alternative to Trump.
And we have one.
Nikki is still fighting because you deserve a choice.
It goes on in that vein. Fundraising emails are designed to say whatever works to raise money. One shouldn’t overinterpret them. But reading through this email, I was struck by one thing:
It barely mentions the fact that Nikki Haley is a Republican.
The only use of the word “Republican” is this: “We’ve seen that a large number of voters in Republican primaries want an alternative to Trump.” It’s a statement about the primaries Haley’s been competing in, rather than one asserting any loyalty to the party or distinctive Republican beliefs.
There is one mention of “party”: “Nikki is our last hope to get our country and our party back on track.” But that’s it. The letter never says what most fundraising letters in primary contests would say: “Here’s why Nikki would be a better Republican standard bearer,” or “Please help Nikki win the Republican nomination.”
Meanwhile, there are repeated invocations of America and Americans:
“Nikki is still fighting because America deserves better.”
Nikki is “continuing to do whatever it takes to . . . make sure every American is given a choice this election.”
And “We must get it right this election! We’ll keep fighting for America—and we won’t rest until America wins!”
Consider that last one: “We won’t rest until America wins.” This doesn’t sound like a fundraising appeal from a candidate for the Republican nomination. It sounds more like a fundraising appeal from a candidate who’s thinking of going on to a third party run.
Haley has argued in recent speeches that America can’t win if the choice is between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Here we’re told that she “won’t rest until America wins.”
So maybe there’s no rest for the weary Republican runner-up? Maybe the Republican primaries have become a prelude for Haley claiming to offer a better choice to America through an independent or third party run?
Or maybe I’m overinterpreting this fundraising appeal. I report, you decide.
—William Kristol
Catching up . . .
Biden says he’s hopeful for a Gaza ceasefire within a week: New York Times
Macron doesn’t rule out sending Western troops to Ukraine: Politico
Russia warns NATO of certain war if West puts troops into Ukraine: Politico
Biden to meet with congressional leaders ahead of government shutdown deadline: NBC News
Yellen urges Israel to restore economic ties to West Bank: New York Times
Union households favor Biden—but by closer margin than in 2020, poll finds: NBC News
Manhattan DA Bragg requests judge impose gag order on Trump during hush money case: Fox News
Quick Hits: ‘If he wins, all this other stuff gets taken care of’
Don’t miss Marc Caputo’s latest MAGAville—hot off the presses this morning—on how Donald Trump is grappling with his campaign’s financial hurdles:
Trump’s legal issues have impacted his money picture in multiple ways: (1) They made some big donors nervous about giving to him, depriving him of money he otherwise would have had sooner. (2) They led some big donors to give to Haley instead, thereby prolonging her campaign. (3) They armed Trump critics with the argument that he wants the RNC to pay his legal bills. (4) The big financial judgments against him have made cash more scarce for Trump—which in turn make it harder to fill gaps by self-funding (which Trump has always been loath to do and hasn’t done this cycle).
“He’s much more engaged than I’ve ever seen him at this, and that’s because he has to be,” said one Republican familiar with the campaign’s finances. “The numbers right now aren’t good, but we should raise a billion dollars or $900 million at this pace now. We’ll have enough.”
The Republican, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations with Trump, was with the former president at the February 16 Mar-a-Lago fundraiser after Justice Engoron’s fine and said Trump “was clearly peeved. He knew it was happening. The number was clearly a lot. But he was strangely in a good mood. You or I would be in therapy if something like that happened to us, but Trump compartmentalizes and the business stuff doesn’t matter as much. What matters is becoming president. He thinks he’s going to win. And he believes that if he wins, all this other stuff gets taken care of.”
Trump has reported having enough cash and assets to pay off the fines, and he briefly fumed to others that he viewed the rulings against him as a way to take all of his easier-to-get money.
“That’s how much cash I have. They’re trying to take my cash away,” Trump told one.
Cheap Shots
I remain utterly disgusted and appalled by how little GOP politicians actually care about the realities of those things they seek to legislate. An embryo is a person? Fuck off, it doesn't become "life" until a female body nurtures it (at great cost, physical and emotional and financial). The GOP needs to create robotic wombs if they want to take women and their bodies and lives out of the creation of new life. I went through 3 rounds of IVF. On average 12 embryos per round at Day 1. By day 5 transfer, 2-4 were left- most don't grow right. I miscarried one at 8 weeks (it wasn't viable- my body was perfect, the embryo was genetically tested and "normal" and yet it never grew). The second NEVER EVEN IMPLANTED. Would I get arrested for that? Because my body had failed to nurture that "life"? What about my miscarriage? Arrested there too for failing? And then finally, my last transfer, I had 13 embryos in the cycle. Put two in me on Day 5. I got twins out of the deal but almost died giving birth to them at 31 weeks due to vicious pre-eclampsia that left me in the ICU for 2 days post birth (I had 8 separate magnesium drips to coat my brain so I didn't stroke out- in another century- or in today's as controlled by the wingnuts, I'd be dead). 11 embryos left, only 2 made it to Day 6 freeze. No way I could birth the two that made it to freeze or I'd die and leave my two sons motherless. I actually did what pro-lifers love and I gave away those two embryos to a friend of my cousin's. She gave birth to my boys' sister and then had a failure to implant the second. But what if she had decided against having kids the first or second go round. Would I be on the hook for abetting the destruction of life? (BTW, in that transfer we hired the best of attorneys to figure out how to agree on all aspects of the donation to her, and it was beyond expensive and well thought out). TL;DR- not one single GOP politician gives a rat's ass about the actual science of life. It's all just "feelings" and to quote Republicans themselves: "fuck their feelings."
Remember when republicans assured us that overturning Roe would simply mean returning the issue to the states, and pro-choice supporters said, 'believe that at your peril'? Remember when VP Harris said, after the Dobbs decision, that medication abortion and contraception were next on the MAGA to-do list, and she was roundly criticized by right-wingers as an alarmist?
Well, here we are. Republicans were NEVER going to be content with leaving abortion rights up to the states. That was the Mother of All Big Lies. The house republicans have introduced a national abortion ban in the form of the 'life begins at conception' bill, AND they're coming for contraception, too. The Alabama Supreme Court equates frozen embryos with children - citing the bible no less, in contravention of the First Amendment. Jane Crow America is upon us.
Women across the political spectrum are angry, alarmed and disgusted in equal measure at having their rights of self-determination and bodily autonomy handed over to a bunch of religious zealots in state capitals across the country. Whether they're pro-choice liberals or keep-your-hands-off-my-rights libertarians, the women of this country are furious.
The current crop of GOPers let the mask slip, and now they're scrambling to convince us they're not exactly what we can see they are. Regardless of your politics, if you're a woman and you don't want to live as a second-class citizen in your own country, vote blue in November.