Monday was the two-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion nationwide. Since then, Democrats have seized on abortion as what they believe is a winning campaign issue – and in many states they’ve been proven correct.
After Roe was overturned, Kansas in 2022 rejected a ballot measure that would have removed the right to an abortion from the state constitution. Ohio last fall enshrined abortion protections in the state constitution. Twenty-one states have advanced abortion protections in some way since the summer of 2022.
Can GOP make abortion their winning issue?
Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Montana) argues it’s time for Republicans to reclaim the high ground in the abortion discussion.
“It really helps us to draw that stark line between what the Republicans represent and what the Democrats represent. They represent death, and Republicans have continued to embrace and support a culture of life,” Rosendale told Washington Watch host Jody Hice. “This is where the abortion issue needs to brought up, needs to be very clear that we are against the killing of children.”
Now, in vitro fertilization (IVF) has become the new abortion battleground.
The Southern Baptist Convention at its annual meeting earlier this month passed a resolution that neither praised nor condemned IVF but clarified the SBC’s position that life must be protected. “Not all technological means of assisting human reproduction are equally God-honoring or morally justified,” the resolution states.
With every successful IVF case, far more embryos are created than are implanted into a female client – and that seems to be the crux of the debate concerning the ethics of the procedure.
Southern Baptist Seminary president Al Mohler estimates that between eight and 16 embryos are created with each case and that “well north of a million” human embryos will be discarded, used for experimentation or for something other than placement with a man and woman in a loving home.
Now hundreds of clinics are conducting IVF procedures with little or no oversight, Rosendale explained.
“They are fertilizing millions of embryos, and if you truly believe like I do, that life begins at conception, then we have millions of children who are being conceived around the country – and only a small percentage of them are actually being brought to birth outside of the mother’s womb,” he said.
Rosendale estimates that 400,000 abortions are conducted annually by Planned Parenthood.
“IVF is destroying at least double, based on just the limited information we’re able to get, the number of children every year that Planned Parenthood is,” the congressman said.
IVF is big business
The IVF market in the U.S. had an estimated worth of $19.78 billion in 2023 with growth expected to exceed $31.1 billion by 2028.
A single IVF cycle – defined as ovarian stimulation, egg retrieval and embryo transfer – can cost up to $30,000 depending on the center and the patient’s individual medication needs, Forbes reported. Medications can account for up to 35% of those charges.
“We as elected officials need to do what we can to educate the public, let them know what’s going on and try to get some kind of regulation put into that industry that I can assure you is doing it for one reason – and that’s the almighty dollar,” Rosendale stated.
