As IVF grew in popularity, so did the concerns of its opponents. Standard practice involves creating multiple embryos, which are checked for genetic abnormalities and the ones that look the healthiest can be transferred. Extra embryos are often frozen. by one count, there are one and a half million frozen embryos in the United States. After a set period of time, they can be donated to science or destroyed, as the Catholic Church feared.
The anti-abortion movement won a partial victory for pro-life at conception in 2001 when President George W. Bush banned the use of federal funds for embryonic stem cell research, but President Barack Obama reversed the policy eight years later.
Beginning in the late 2000s, voters rejected ballot initiatives to enshrine fetal personhood in at least five states. Voters in deep red Mississippi looked likely to pass the personhood measure in 2011. But in the weeks before the election, doctors and abortion rights groups warned of the threat to IVF and birth control, and the initiative failed , 58% to 42%.
In criminal law, however, embryonic personhood was established. In 1986, Minnesota passed a law that treated the death of a fetus as homicide under certain circumstances. More than 30 states “fully recognize unborn victims of violence,” in the words of the National Right to Life Commission, by applying fetal homicide laws at any point in development in the womb. Some states have similarly expanded their child abuse laws to cover a fetus. Hundreds of women have been prosecuted under these statutes, often for drug use during pregnancy or, in a few cases, after a miscarriage.
Politically speaking, it is much easier to target these women, who may be struggling with poverty or addiction, than to target the often middle-class and affluent couples who undergo IVF (The procedure costs between $12,000 and $30,000.) Representatives for IVF include former Vice President Mike Pence, an evangelical Christian who opposes abortion. Pence and his wife, Karen, underwent IVF, he revealed in 2022. Fertility treatments “deserve the protection of the law,” he said at the time. “They gave us great comfort during those long and difficult years when we struggled with infertility in our marriage.”
