Dem
51
GOP
49
Before we get to yesterday's news, we need to go back a couple of days to provide some potentially useful context. Southern Baptists are rightfully concerned about the implications of in-vitro fertilization. And what we mean by "rightfully concerned" is that if you legitimately believe that life begins at conception, then IVF raises a lot of difficult questions that are somewhere between "hard" and "impossible" to answer. The most obvious is the disposition of unused embryos. If those are lives, must they be given legal protections? Must they be preserved in perpetuity, possibly even beyond a normal human lifespan? If the answer to the latter question is "yes," who is responsible for that task?
For these reasons (and undoubtedly others that have to do sex, sexuality, women's place in the world, etc.), the Southern Baptist Convention voted on Wednesday in favor of a resolution declaring the group's formal opposition to IVF. The Southern Baptists are the nation's largest (13 million people) and most politically connected Protestant denomination, and so their decision throws a pretty big wrench into the works for Republican politicians, who have spent the last several months scrambling to show their support for IVF after Alabama's Supreme Court ruled that embryos count as children for some (all?) legal purposes.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is well aware that the vast majority of Democrats support the availability of IVF. He is also well aware that the issue has now become a very hot potato for Republicans. This is a situation that calls for a show vote, and so he held one yesterday on a bill that would guarantee access to IVF nationwide. It was a procedural vote, and it failed, as Schumer expected it would. The vote was 48-47; because of the filibuster, to advance the legislation would have required 60 votes. The vote was party line, excepting that Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Susan Collins (R-ME) voted with the Democrats.
Senate Republicans, in an effort to have it both ways, fell all over themselves trying to explain how they are pro-IVF, but anti- the IVF bill. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), for example, said that he likes IVF but he doesn't want to do anything to infringe on Americans' religious freedom. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) echoed the religious freedom claim, and also said that he prefers his bill, which would deny Medicaid funding to any state that prohibits IVF. Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) said that IVF is currently legal in all 50 states, so why does the Senate need to do anything? This ignores the fact that state legislatures and state supreme courts have shown many times they can make radical changes to state law overnight, if they are so inclined. IVF may be legal everywhere today, but given the resolution passed by the Southern Baptists, would you be stunned if it were illegal in a half-dozen red states by September?
In the end, we think this story supports the observation we made in the previous one: There are so many fronts in this particular struggle that Democrats are going to have no trouble finding things that will make Republicans squirm. If it's not mifepristone, it will be IVF. If it's not IVF, it will be abortion bans. If it's not abortion bans, it will be women who suffered due to the lack of proper reproductive care. This is an extremely powerful issue for the blue team, and will remain so through November. (Z)