When the Supreme Court undid Roe Vs Wade and destroyed abortion as a Federally protected right those of us who are pro-choice warned you. We told you that women would be stuck with nonviable pregnancies in states that wouldn't let them abort a fetus with zero chance of survival. We warned you that women having miscarriages would potentially be prosecuted now that they were little more than incubators and the fetus they carried had the full rights of an actual living baby. We also said that IVF would be at risk as those are fertilized eggs. Yes, they are in a petri dish and frozen in a lab, but if life begins at conception, then those are equal to a freshly-born baby in the eyes of anti-choice zealots. They're playing a long game, and they are unfortunately winning.
I was not surprised in the least when a judge ruled a fertilized egg used for the intention of IVF was a human baby and had the full rights of a real human. I also wasn't surprised that Republicans quickly tried to backpedal and talk about making exceptions because these are people who want babies who are doing IVF so of course they would do all they could for these women. Some have pointed out that a significant number of those who do IVF are wealthy white women. A chunk of that demographic might have voted Republican and be upset to discover that banning the right to choose how to control their bodies involves IVF too. After all, people doing IVF want a baby, they aren't getting an abortion! Well, guess what? When you decide that a fertilized egg is a baby with no exceptions, that means no exceptions. Zero wiggle room.
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Whether you need an abortion because your baby will be born with a terminal illness like Tay-Sachs, were raped, just don't want to have a child, or do desperately want a kid but have to do IVF, you're out of luck. That's because this was never about protecting babies, it was about controlling women or anyone with a uterus (not everyone with a uterus identifies as a woman, after all). It isn't about kids, it is about control and making sure you don't have it over your reproductive organs. IVF was a piece of control for those who wanted a child but, hey, no exceptions. You know how the Plan B pill is not an abortion but could theoretically keep an egg from being fertilized or a fertilized egg from implanting? They're going to come for that next.
I'm not exaggerating. Tons of anti-choice groups want to make Plan B illegal and then have their sights set on regular ol' birth control under the guise of it harming women. Yet more control that women will have stripped away. Condoms will probably be legal still, however. After all, men/anybody with a penis can choose if they want to wear those or not and nobody wants to control a man's body--heaven forbid! Go ahead and tell me I'm being silly. Tell me that once abortion became a state's issue Republicans wouldn't hint at a federal abortion ban (they have). Tell me they wouldn't go after IVF as you stated a year ago (they've gone after it). Tell me birth control-related pills aren't next because you'd have been wrong about everything else so what's to stop you being wrong about this? It is all about taking reproductive control away from anyone with a uterus and giving that control to cisgender (and of course straight) men. If you can make it harder for LGBTQ couples to have a kid by banning IVF that's just a nice bonus as they're living in sin anyway, right Conservatives?
Taking away the right to have an abortion was just the first step of many. They won't stop until we live in a reproductive dictatorship. You can say I'm engaging in hyperbole, but so far they've followed every step I and other reproductive health advocates have said they would. They've trampled on a bunch of rights so far on their march to total control, what's to stop the anti-choice lobby from stopping now besides us speaking out and voting for politicians who will stand against their bullshit?
