When Donald Trump appointed three right-wing justices to the Supreme Court, it was only a matter of time — and not very much time, as it turned out — before the court would overturn Roe v. Wade.
And when the ruling came down, I wrote, as did many others, that this was the ultimate expression of the dog-finally-catching-the-car metaphor/cliché and that the ruling would be a disaster for the Republican Party.
It has been at least a semi-disaster for Republicans, who have been losing one election after another since the Dobbs ruling. And now, predictably, it just got worse.
As you may have heard, the Alabama Supreme Court has gone all Christian nationalist and, relying on an Alabama personhood law which says that life begins at conception, decided that frozen embryos are actually children and that destroying them falls under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.
This time, it seems the dog has caught a 16-wheeler. And it looks like Lauren Boebert could be among those tangled up in the wheels.
If frozen embryos are children, then what happens, during IVF treatment, when unused frozen embryos are discarded, either accidentally or intentionally? Since no one is sure, several clinics in Alabama have paused their IVF treatments until they know whether doctors or clinics could be held liable for the death of a, uh, frozen child.
(By the way, is it actually OK to freeze children? Is it OK to keep children in a test tube? And if these frozen embryos, and unfrozen embryos for that matter, actually are children at conception, are they also U.S. citizens — you know, anchor embryos — if their parents are from another country but conceive while in Alabama? We have questions.)
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So, some Alabama legislators are now trying to pass a bill to exempt IVF treatments from the state’s current law. The Alabama attorney general has already said he doesn’t believe anyone will be prosecuted. Meanwhile, some women living in Alabama and other red states who have frozen fertilized eggs are sending them to be stored in blue states, just in case.
And many Republicans are now running away as fast their little hypocritical legs will carry them from the ruling, praising IVF treatments, praising the births of children however they’re born, saying, as Donald Trump did, that Alabama needs to fix this. They’re running away from the ruling because voters, including evangelicals, overwhelmingly approve of IVF treatments, which have accounted for many hundreds of thousands of births.
Even U.S. House Speaker-for-now Mike Johnson, who lives on the far-right edges of Christian nationalism, has seen the need to speak up for IVF.
But there’s a but. A big but. A gigantic but that many Republicans are trying to find a way to work around.
Last year, 124 U.S. House Republicans co-sponsored a life-begins-at-conception bill — you know, like the personhood amendments that Coloradans have repeatedly rejected — that makes no exception for IVF treatments. It makes no exceptions for anything. It’s just the latest iteration of personhood bills that get introduced — and never acted on because they’re far too radical for the American public.
You may remember when Cory Gardner, while running for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Mark Udall in 2014, was a co-sponsor of a House personhood bill while insisting, time after time after time, that there was no personhood bill. Of course, there was. That didn’t stop The Denver Post from endorsing him — an endorsement they eventually withdrew. It was a magic act for Gardner, one that actually helped him defeat Udall. Of course, after one term, he lost his seat to John Hickenlooper.
Would that fly today? We may find out. Guess which GOP members are among the many co-sponsors of the latest House personhood bill.
Yes, of course, Mike Johnson. Also, of course, Lauren Boebert. And, yes, also Ken Buck and Doug Lamborn, neither of whom is running for re-election. It is a statement bill and nothing else. But what is the statement supposed to mean?
Well, the Alabama Supreme Court has given one answer to the question.
There are others. If life begins at conception, it follows that any abortion, at any time, under any circumstance, would be taking a life. If Republicans didn’t get called out on it before, they will now.
Which is why Nikki Haley, who was in Colorado on Tuesday at a campaign rally, had to backtrack from her initial reaction to the Alabama ruling, which was that “embryos, to me, are babies.” Understanding that she had put herself on the wrong side of a volatile issue, she went on to say that her statement didn’t mean she agreed with the Alabama Supreme Court.
But Democrats have already tried to turn the issue to their advantage. In the Senate, Democrats are planning to call for a bill to protect IVF nationwide. And they’re asking that the bill be passed by unanimous consent — meaning everyone has to agree to it, meaning Republicans would have to go on the record in support or opposition.
Presumably, it will fail. And more than presumably, Democrats will be using that, along with the Alabama ruling, in the coming November elections.
One aspect of the ruling that caused particular outrage was a concurring opinion by Alabama Justice Tom Parker, who cited the Bible in saying that Alabama law included a “theologically-based view of the sanctity of life” and that “life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God.”
Parker is an advocate of what is called the Seven Mountains Mandate, which calls for American law and society to follow Christian ideology. I’d never heard of it until a certain Colorado member of Congress was embracing it.
You can make an educated guess on this one, too. Lauren Boebert — who has infamously said she is “tired of this church and state separation junk” and that the “church is supposed to direct the government” — is a Seven Mountains advocate.
In 2022, while addressing a political conference, Boebert said it was time to “rise up” and “reform the nation via the Seven Mountains” to put “God back at the center of the country.”
Boebert was running for re-election in the 3rd Congressional District at the time, and she barely scraped by, beating Democrat Adam Frisch by 546 votes. Now, in hopes of saving her cushy job, she has moved to the even-more-Republican 4th CD, where she is running in an effort to win Buck’s seat.
Coincidentally, but happily, Gardner has emerged from a self-imposed political exile to endorse former state Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg in the 4th CD primary, the district that Gardner represented before he ran for Senate.
That’s significant because it means Gardner, as a representative of the old-line Colorado GOP establishment, is clearly saying he is not supporting Boebert. I don’t know how it would fly in the very conservative 4th CD, but Gardner could warn Boebert of the perils of supporting personhood.
That wouldn’t stop Boebert, of course. Well, call me nostalgic, but I’d love to see Gardner have to explain again how he’s on both sides of the personhood debate. He could offer it simply as guidance for the many Republicans, particularly those in swing states, who are going to have to explain it.
Over and over again.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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