For the second time this year, GOP Senators just killed an effort to protect IVF treatment nationwide.
And there’s a reason they keep voting this way.
It’s because their conservative base is clamoring to ban IVF. And when you look closely at Project 2025, writings on the website of Heritage Foundation (the quarterback of Project 2025), the policy positions of the Christian far right, and the “Trump Republican Platform” (his words, not mine), there’s no doubt that IVF treatment is in grave jeopardy if Trump were to win this November.
Which is why EPISODE 2 of our podcast—“Trump’s Project 2025, Up Close and Personal”—which we are releasing today, focuses on the story of a woman who is informed in February 2025 that she can no longer access IVF treatments.
LISTEN TO EMMY-NOMINATED J. SMITH CAMERON TELL THAT PAINFUL STORY BY CLICKING HERE
The FACTS:
Project 2025 declares war on IVF when it defines the mission of the Health and Human Services Dept. as follows: “From the moment of conception every human being possesses inherent dignity and worth, and our humanity does not depend on our age, stage of development, race, or abilities. The Secretary must ensure that all HHS programs and activities are rooted in a deep respect for innocent human life from day one…”
This language is not at all subtle.
First, the clear and consistent definition of “conception,” which Project 2025 explicitly sets as the starting point of life (page 450), is the moment an egg is fertilized to become an embryo. Medical News Today adds: “People usually define conception as the moment when a sperm fertilizes an egg. This can happen inside the body or outside of the body when people are using IVF.”
So Project 2025 is declaring right up front that it believes that from “day one,” embryos comprise “innocent human life.”
And HHS’s top priority must be to protect them.
This is precisely the language and reasoning that led the Alabama Supreme Court to rule that, as Politico summarized, “frozen embryos created during the IVF process should have full personhood rights.”
And it’s the same logic that has led far-right groups such as the Southern Baptist Convention, “the nation’s largest and most politically powerful Protestant denomination,” to oppose IVF treatment because (as its resolution declared) IVF “most often participates in the destruction of embryonic human life.” As Politico wrote: “The [SBC] move may signal the beginning of a broad turn on the right against IVF, an issue that many evangelicals, anti-abortion advocates and other social conservatives see as the “pro-life” movement’s next frontier — one they hope will eventually lead to restrictions, or outright bans, on IVF at the state and federal levels.”
Finally, it’s also the approach that animates the writings you can find directly on the website of the Heritage Foundation (the quarterback of Project 2025), which include that:
“It is past time for Protestant denominations to carefully examine the use of assisted reproductive technologies, namely in vitro fertilization (IVF) and surrogate motherhood….
IVF and surrogate motherhood…routinely destroy or violate embryonic human life….
infertility is a byproduct of sin entering the world and does not redefine God’s vision for the package deal of marriage, sex, and procreation….
The very use of reproductive technologies such as IVF and surrogate motherhood, which circumvent and reinvent natural fertility, disrupt this “package deal” of marriage, sex, and procreation.”
Another article from Heritage, expounds more on the Biblical treatment of infertility. Just a few more quotes to give you a sense of it:
“Infertility, then, is a result of the fall. To experience infertility is not a sin in and of itself, but it is the consequence of sin entering the world….
[T]he use of many reproductive technologies may violate God’s vision for marriage, sex, and procreation (Malachi 2:15).”
“It is God who opens and closes the womb. He is the only one with power to open ours today….When people try to produce children in their own power and control, Scripture calls such work vain….It is the Lord that builds the house. If or when a couple bears children is wholly in God’s control, not ours.”
Again, this is all from the Heritage Foundation. It’s on their website, just a few clicks away from Project 2025:
Finally, there’s Trump himself.
On his own website, Trump touts the “Trump Republican Platform”.
And when you click the link on Trump’s website to examine that “Trump Republican Platform,” it takes you to another page that presents the same “fetal personhood” language staring you right in the face:
And as I’ve covered in prior posts, this theory not only protects life “from conception,” it also embraces the notion that such life is protected in the Fourteenth Amendment. Which means that you don’t even need a national abortion ban enacted through legislation—it could happen simply with Clarence Thomas and 4 of his buddies declaring that they agree with this theory in an opinions. (And of course, there are close ties to this theory and the Federalist Society which has taken over so much of the federal judiciary).
So yes, that would mean a national ban on abortion and IVF without one vote of Congress or any action by the president. It would happen by Court ruling.
And right there on Donald Trump’s website, he’s sending a signal to a key part of his base that is all in on that theory. And they know it.
Connect all those dots, and IVF treatments are clearly in great jeopardy should Donald Trump win this election. (For more on all this, read HERE and HERE).
PODCAST: EPISODE 2
So….that is why Episode 2 of “Trump’s Project 2025: Up Close and Personal” is dedicated to the story of Eve Wallace—a nurse herself, already enduring a painful and costly infertility journey, who learns in February 2025 that she can no longer undergo IVF treatment.
Not because of biology, or medicine. But because of politics.
And the Episode is powerfully narrated by Emmy-nominated actress and democracy advocate J. Smith Cameron. We are honored to have her lend her talent to this story.
Take a listen HERE.
Then please share this so others also see what’s at stake, and work tirelessly to keep stories like this from actually happening.
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