Katie Britt Keeps Trying to Distance the GOP From Its War on IVF

The Alabama senator’s RNC speech largely consisted of platitudes papering over her party’s horrific anti-abortion extremism.

By Kylie Cheung | July 16, 2024 | 1:45pm

Photo: Getty Images Politics

Katie Britt Keeps Trying to Distance the GOP From Its War on IVF

In March, Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) rose to national prominence by delivering a bizarre counter-speech to President Biden’s State of the Union address from her home kitchen. And on Monday, she spoke again, this time at the Republican National Convention’s opening night in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, largely railing against inflation and Biden’s presidential fitness. But her speech was also rife with the Republican Party’s bullshit narrative about being the party of family, despite its escalating war on IVF and fertility technology. “Families across our nation deserve better,” Britt said, further pledging that in former President Trump’s second term, he’ll “put parents, families, and hard-working Americans first.”

The remarks came after Britt told Axios earlier in the day that she accepted Trump’s position of leaving abortion up to the states, a subject she completely avoided in her speech. “I think obviously President Trump has set the agenda,” Britt told the outlet. The GOP formally adopted its 2024 platform on Monday, which had previously received fawning media coverage for supposedly “softening” its anti-abortion stance. But while the platform doesn’t openly call for a national abortion ban (like it did in 2016), it does call for the 14th Amendment to apply to fetuses and accord them personhood and citizenship rights, which is arguably even more terrifying.

Most Popular

“[Trump] ran both in ’16 and ’20 on returning [abortion policy] to the states,” Britt further told Axios. “We have done that now. I think we’ll continue to work to find ways to protect life and I think the platform says that.” This, of course, is just a sneaky way of declaring the party’s intention of imposing fetal personhood without directly saying it.

Despite declaring that the GOP is “the party of life, the party of parents, the party of families” in her March, post-SOTU speech, Britt herself has worked to limit IVF and fertility technology. In May, in an effort to distance the party from the Alabama court ruling that temporarily banned IVF, Britt and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) introduced an entirely symbolic bill to “protect” IVF—but it was widely panned by fertility advocates. While it technically threatens to strip Medicaid funding from any state that passes a ban on IVF, it simultaneously invites states to freely pass any legislation that would regulate or police the IVF process. Experts say this leaves the door wide open for implicit, backdoor bans.

Meanwhile, since February, Senate Republicans have in fact blocked legislation to codify a federal right to provide and receive fertility treatments like IVF not once but twice.

Britt has also been a leading voice among Republicans calling for the party to performatively show up more for pregnant people, given their responsibility for killing Roe v. Wade. But all she’s really offered is a terrifying bill introduced ahead of Mother’s Day to create an online government database called “pregnancy.gov,” which would direct people with unwanted pregnancies to provide their name, zip code, and contact information to be connected to an anti-abortion crisis pregnancy center near them. The website would effectively serve as a government-run surveillance hub at a time when the threat of pregnancy and abortion-related criminalization looms larger than ever.

“We see how Biden and Harris keep making things worse. … [Biden’s] weakness is costing us our opportunity, our prosperity, our security, our safety,” Britt said on Monday. “Each diminished. All in decline. Just like the man in the Oval Office.” Of course, for all the current administration’s flaws, a second Trump presidency is guaranteed to make matters even bleaker for families—starting with our ability to even create families in the first place.