“Republicans want to force women to stay pregnant against their will while also preventing women who want to get pregnant from doing so,” said Rep. Lois Frankel.
Democrats’ House campaign arm put Rep. Anna Paulina Luna on blast after she removed her name from an otherwise Democrats-only bill that would protect access to IVF. | Francis Chung/POLITICO
TALLAHASSEE, Florida — A pause on in vitro fertilization in Alabama is reverberating in Florida and could reshape the political landscape.
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Democrats have warned that upending policies on reproductive health wouldn’t end with abortion — and Florida Democrats are using the Alabama high court’s decision as a prime example of that.
Now they’re poised to make Republicans own it in 2024.
“Isn’t that crazy? Republicans want to force women to stay pregnant against their will while also preventing women who want to get pregnant from doing so,” said U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel (D-Fla.), who chairs the Democratic Women’s Caucus, during a press conference in D.C. Thursday.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee put U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) on blast after she removed her name from an otherwise Democrats-only bill that would protect access to IVF. Luna said on social media this week that her name had been put on the bill without her confirmation and that certain amendments were needed to get her buy-in. She’s instead working on a bipartisan bill and told the Tampa Bay Times that states should act.
Whitney Fox, a Democratic former transit official who is vying for Luna’s seat, criticized the congresswoman in a video on X and pledged if elected to codify IVF rights into federal law.
“Once we give up one freedom and we don’t fight back, it doesn’t stop there,” she said. “Alabama, I’m afraid, is just the example this week.”
Since Alabama’s Supreme Court decision, Republicans across the country have scrambled to find a position on IVF, which remains popular with many Americans. Several top GOP governors last week, including Georgia’s Brian Kemp and Tennessee’s Bill Lee, said during POLITICO’s Governors Summit that they support IVF but wouldn’t address the state high court’s ruling that frozen embryos are children.
President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign is also using the issue to hammer former President Donald Trump on the issue with the aim of tying him and Republicans to the Supreme Court’s decision to dismantle Roe.
The issue resonates with many Democrats in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis and the GOP-led Legislature have restricted abortion access in a state that’s been a safe haven for the procedure in the Southeast. Florida’s laws restricting abortion at 15 weeks without exemptions for victims of rape and incest — and another six-week ban that’s not yet implemented — could cut off access to the procedure for thousands of women in neighboring states with stricter abortion bans who come to Florida for abortions. Both of Florida’s laws are being challenged and the state Supreme Court will decide whether to uphold the bans.
Like Luna, Florida Republicans have said they support IVF, especially at Trump’s urging. But eight GOP U.S House members from Florida signed onto the Life at Conception Act that Democrats view as similar to the Alabama court’s decision.
And this week, no Senate Republican signed onto the Democratic bill protecting IVF, which failed on the floor under a procedure where just one Republican can object. The bill’s lead sponsor, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), is pushing to bring it back and get every Republican on the record for how they’ll vote. Some say the matter should be left to the states while the influential SBA Pro-Life America opposed Democrats’ bill as an overreach, saying it would codify human cloning and genetic engineering of human embryos.
Florida’s Republican senators downplayed the issue or defended IVF. Sen. Marco Rubio insisted IVF’s future was not under threat. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who is up for reelection in November, said on social media that he agreed with Trump’s position and that “any attempt to restrict IVF must be rejected.” But Scott’s challenger, former U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, slammed him for having done “nothing” as Senate Republicans blocked this week’s IVF protections bill.
Back in the Florida Legislature, lawmakers this week decided to postpone a bill that would have allowed parents to get financial damages in cases of wrongful death for fetuses, POLITICO’s Arek Sarkissian reported. While Democrats had repeatedly raised concerns about how infertility treatments might be affected, and changes were made to the bill to address IVF, the Alabama ruling ultimately proved too jarring.
No committee is scheduled to hear the bill before the end of the session next week, increasing the likelihood that it won’t make it to the floor.
Source: Politico
