Senate ‘Reproductive Freedoms’ Hearing Turns Into IVF Debate

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing chaired Wednesday by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), lawmakers debated both abortion and in vitro fertilization (IVF), a procedure in which a human egg is fertilized in a laboratory, then transferred to a woman’s uterus.

This was the third in a series of hearings exploring abortion issues since June 2022, when the Supreme Court issued its decision in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade.

“Fallout of the Dobbs Decision has been devastating. Women with nonviable, life-threatening pregnancies have been denied access to medical care,” Mr. Durbin said in his opening statement.

“Those of us who believe in a woman’s right to bodily autonomy need to step up and stop this chaos. We must respect women’s rights to make their own reproductive health decisions. But the question remains, will our Republican colleagues join us in this effort and support legal access to abortion and reproductive freedom?”

Ranking Member Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) responded in his opening statement.

“You and others on your side have been supporting national laws that would override every state pro-life law on the books, to replace it with rules that will not be Roe v. Wade. There would be absolutely no limitations at all on the ability to get an abortion,” Mr. Graham said.

“Politically, all the energy on your side is to make America like China, North Korea, and Iran when it comes to abortion, where you’re going to have abortion literally right up to the moment of birth with no exceptions at all. Most Americans reject that way of thinking.”

Mr. Graham said he has been vocal about a national limitation of abortion at 15 weeks with exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother.

IVF Personhood Debate

The Alabama Supreme Court issued a ruling in February declaring that embryos created through IVF should be considered children.

The court had to weigh that matter for a case in which couples sued an IVF business that destroyed frozen embryos the couples had created. This decision has become a flash point in the abortion debate because giving unborn babies personhood is something pro-life advocates have long desired.

Personhood is a problem for the pro-abortion community because anyone considered a “person” would have rights.

“If you believe a fertilized egg is legally a person with all the same rights as everybody here in this room, that endangers IVF, contraception, and any medical care that would endanger that fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus,” testified Lourdes Rivera, president of Pregnancy Justice in New York. During her testimony, she often referred to women as pregnant people.

“When an anti-abortion movement talks about fetal and embryonic personhood, it is not about protecting babies. It is about controlling and punishing women, pregnant people, and communities that are already marginalized,” Ms. Rivera said.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) has had a child through IVF.

“I am uniquely situated to remind this committee of a basic principle: we can recognize the value of potential human life, acknowledge that fertilized eggs are incredibly precious and valuable, and we can also accept the fact that an embryo is not yet a human being,” Ms. Duckworth said. “Federal law wisely reflects this fact by defining the terms person, human being, child, and individual to only include … every infant member of the species Homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development.”

Many Republicans have come out in support of IVF, and Mr. Durban said he can’t understand that position.

“If you believe that life begins at the moment of conception, if that is your premise for your policy and your law, how are you going to explain IVF? At the end of the day, there are going to be embryos that are not implanted and something has to happen to them.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called the hearing an act of political misdirection.

“There are sharp, passionate, emotional, personal disagreements on this issue that people rightly care very deeply about,” Mr. Cruz said. He called the position of elected Democrats in Congress on abortion wildly out of step with the American people.

“Every Democrat in the Senate … has voted for legislation that would strike down every single common sense restriction on abortion adopted by every state in America,” he said. “They would legalize abortion, up until the very moment of birth. They would legalize partial birth abortion. They would strike down every law providing for parental notification or parental consent.”

He said 100 percent of senators in both parties support IVF and that it is fully protected in law and not in danger of being outlawed.

“The Democrats know this,” Mr. Cruz said. “Understand why we’re having a hearing on IVF. Not because there’s any threat to IVF, but because the Democrats cannot defend their position on abortion.”