Experts unpack the implications of the Alabama Supreme Court ruling on IVF

you know my mother used to always say that actions speak louder than words and several House Republicans have said in recent days that they oppose the Alabama Supreme Court ruling you know the one that embryos have the same rights as living children but just last year 125 House Republicans signed on to legislation that's known as the life at conception bill that bill contains language that Echoes the IVF ruling the co-sponsors include nearly a dozen Republic rep an running for re-election in com

petitive congressional districts look at their faces so we're going to talk a little bit more about this with some experts Georgetown law professor and on the issues podcast host Michelle Goodwin and Mark Joseph Stern who's a senior staff writer at slate and one of my favorite Court Watchers at the Supreme Court Professor goodwi you anticipated this about a decade ago none of this is surprising I I did because between 2010 and 2013 there were more anti-abortion anti-contraception laws that were

were proposed and enacted then the 30 years prior combined at the time people were asleep sleepwalking with regard to all of this and I was listening to what lawmakers were saying as they were promoting things that would ultimately get us to this point for example embryo adoption bills which seem fine cryopreserved embryos that couples no longer need that they could be adopted by other couples but behind it were lawmakers saying and this will grant those embryos constitutional rights that will b

e on par with women so their constitutional rights will meet the constitutional rights of women and May in fact even Trump the sub the constitutional rights of women how do how do we see this this narrative playing out um I want to uh uh Mark a comment on Michelle steel uh of California she um is someone who no relation by the way who's someone I mean you know no e on the end so it matters uh but she is someone who has been uh out there uh saying quote as someone who struggled to get pregnant I

believe all life is a gift IVF allowed me is as it has so many others to start my family I believe there's nothing more pro-life than helping families have children and I do not support Federal restrictions on IVF but at the same time she supports uh the life at conception Bill how do how do they reconc I'm not asking you to answer for them but I mean in terms of the narrative publicly what should we take from that position how do how do you see those two competing interests coming together I th

ink what we have seen is an escalation of a movement that has become untether to their own deep principles for example if you think about anti-abortion as being pronatalist itself that people should have babies right that that's important for our country right or for certain populations of our country what you see in the South Carolina ruling is that it's now become untethered from that now where if Embry Alabama excuse me thank you that if embryos have rights constitutional rights civil rights

rights to be protected by the state then of course that makes it very vulnerable for couples that might want to use these Technologies and this is where I think there is a PO hole or a speed bump that they have now crossed because there are many Republicans that have used these Technologies about 20% of American couples are infertile to begin with and then there are any number of reasons why couples would want to use assisted reproductive Technologies including lgbtq couples many couples now use

these Technologies and I am sure across the country there are Republicans that are outraged by this Alabama decision and what might fall flow from it in other states too you know Mark I I mean for years for for years uh elected officials will tell you that Republican elected officials will say we did not run on jailing women right criminalizing doctors criminalizing or Banning IVF but with the overturning of roow versus Wade with the Dos decision that's exactly what now is happening uh Michelle

the professor predicted this years ago and didn't the justices tell us what was going to happen with the Supreme Court of majority opinion in DS absolutely um the three denters in dobs actually specifically called out IVF as a procedure that was clearly imperil by the majority opinion allowing states to ban abortion and the reason why is so obvious right IVF involves the destruction of some unused embryos it it can't work unless clinics and patients have a right to say we are disposing of these

embryos that we no longer want or need um and yet the decision to overturn row allowed states to begin defining life not just at what they call conception but at fertilization and that's what's so pernicious about the federal bill that congresswoman steel co-sponsored it defines life at fertilization and extends full legal equality quote unquote to fertilized embryos with the very obvious intent to Outlaw or severely restrict IVF and I think those Representatives must have known what they were

doing because there have been movements for personhood amendments all around the country including in Alabama this decision actually it spurs in part from a personhood amendment to the Constitution that was written by anti-abortion activists to Encompass not only abortion but also IVF and even some forms of contraception that they call abor of Fati and I'll just note there was a senate version of this bill that we're talking about that had a carve out for IVF that said we're not going to allow t

his legislation to be used to restrict IVF the house bill did not have that carve out the house knew what it was doing and so for this congresswoman to come in and now say I would never support legislation to restrict IVF that is exactly what she did and if this bill ever passed and has more than a 100 Republican co- sponsors it would mean that every State's policy would suddenly mirror the policy of Al abama today and IVF patients around the country would suddenly find their access to care cut

off and their ability to build a family abolished sometimes I think Michelle the people hear these stories and they say wow that is so tragic for families in Alabama it is bigger than Alabama Amanda zeroski who came to National promin and she was denied an abortion in Texas she nearly died she has frozen embryos in Texas that she is now thinking about having to ship out of state in order to protect them should Texas take up a similar approach as Alabama so here you have someone who is impacted n

ot once but twice that's right uh post dos there's been legal chaos and to Mark's point if you look at the state of Alabama and that Supreme Court this is not their first time they're actually building on a pre-ops precedent where in a court ruling involving a law that had nothing to do with women it was a child endangerment law but prosecutors were weaponizing it against women it was a law intended to actually go after men who were turning their homes into meth labs and these meth labs blowing

up or catching a fire and there was a real concern that children living in those families in those homes could be harmed but what prosecutors did rather than going after those men decided that they would go after pregnant women who would tell their doctors about their social medical history when a doctor ask well do you drink wine how many glasses a week have you used an illicit drug do you use prescription medications and prosecutors sought to get that information in Alabama from doctors and nu

rses and and use it against those patients and there was one who challenged this because she said this is private information that I'm sharing with my doctors I'm going for prenatal care I want to have this child the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that there was no difference between a child and a fetus and no difference between a child and a non-viable fetus and this was pre-dbs but to your point yes this is a kind of wreckage that we may see across Myriad States because often these clinics work i

n different states in all already in Alabama you have a university saying we're going to suspend you have organizations saying we won't transport into that state it is pure chaos that has resulted now in the wake of Dos the cruelty and the chaos is the point Michelle Goodwin Mark Joseph Stern thank you both