Pelosi Responds to GOP Anti-IVF Bill, Says They Need a Lesson

(RepublicanDaily.org) – Former House Speaker and Democratic California Representative Nancy Pelosi has weighed in on the hubbub surrounding Alabama’s controversial anti-IVF bill as she scored Republicans, saying that they need a lesson in the “birds and the bees.”

IVF, or in-vitro fertilization, was suddenly thrust into the national spotlight in recent weeks after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos that were conceived under IVF should be considered as children, or “persons.” The ruling followed a wrongful death suit filed by a group of parents whose frozen embryos were killed in an accident.

In December 2020, a patient at a hospital in Mobile, Alabama, wandered into a fertility clinic housed in the hospital’s premises through an “unsecured doorway.” The patient then proceeded to remove several embryos from the cryogenic nursery, but dropped them when ostensibly “freeze-burned” by the extremely low temperatures the embryos were stored in. The patient dropped the embryos on the floor, destroying them in the process.

The parents the embryos belonged to sued for wrongful death, but a trial court dismissed the claims, saying that the embryos did not meet the legal definition for a person or a child. However, the Alabama Supreme Court overturned this decision, ruling that the embryos were “extrauterine children,” and thus covered by the Wrongful Death of a Minor law of the state.

While some Republicans in Congress and the Senate have voiced their support for the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision, many other members of the GOP in both the Upper and Lower House have come out in support of IVF and parents’ rights to have access to the technology. Even in Alabama, its House and Senate have passed bills to protect IVF in response tot he backlash following the Alabama SC’s decision, as well as concerns from reproductive health advocates that the decision could become a gateway for banning IVF altogether. Critics of the court’s ruling also worry that increased projected liability costs could make the already high-priced procedure even more prohibitively expensive.

Many Republicans have said that they support IVF, but some have pointed out their difficulty in reconciling that support with their statements on abortion indicating that “life begins at conception.”