It’s almost like the Republicans are trying to lose this one
Sometimes it seems like Republicans are being politically reckless on purpose, by pursuing some truly demented stands in the culture wars that are directly contradictory to where most people stand. It was bad enough that Republicans cheered the repeal of Roe v. Wade, a catastrophic ruling by Federalist Society judges that brought a lot of unnecessary pain and suffering over the last two years and now the party is hemorrhaging winnable election after winnable election to the Democrats by sizable margins. Then the same ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade was used to also justify a ban on IVF therapy, something that a numnber of conservatives rely on in order to have children.
A few Republicans have tried to distance themselves from the Alabama federal court ruling on IVF, even with the former guy offering a weak rebuke against it. The problem is they’re doing absolutely nothing to try and protect the availability of IVF which clearly falls under the Dobbs ruling, and now there are House Republicans actively coming out against IVF, even when a number of states have ballot initiatives on the accessibility of abortion. Montana, one of the battlegrounds for U.S. Senate, happens to be one of them – where Rep. Matt Rosendale is calling for defunding the practice of IVF that he calls morally wrong.
Unfortunately, when push comes to shove, Republican policy seems gratuitously awful just because it is. This is the election where they’re putting all the eggs in one basket in hopes that they win big. Regardless of the mixed messages we get, Republicans really will go after reproductive freedom if they win in November. Luckily, it’s become just that easy for us to tie them to their extreme messaging. Let’s put in the work and elect Democrats up and down the ballot on Nov 5.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making