Speaking before a swanky crowd of Democratic lawmakers, political operatives, and deep-pocketed donors earlier this month at the annual We Are Emily Gala, Vice President Kamala Harris cast Donald Trump as an enemy of in vitro fertilization.
“In an interview last week, he seemed perfectly fine with a national ban that would make IVF illegal across the country,” the White House’s lead abortion-rights messenger told the crowd of Democrats gathered to support Emily’s List, the group that works to elect pro-choice Democratic women nationwide.
In February, when the Alabama supreme court ruled that frozen embryos created through IVF are considered children under state law, Democratic operatives and candidates quickly added IVF as another bow in their “reproductive-rights” quiver ahead of the 2024 elections. In early March, Harris even began referring to Trump in social media posts as the “architect of the IVF crisis.”
Yet it’s far from clear whether Democrats’ IVF-related attacks are resonating at all with voters, given that Trump — who now believes abortion should be left to the states — has said he would “strongly support the availability of IVF” and most down-ballot Republican candidates are following his lead in embracing access to fertility treatments.
Democrats’ response to Trump’s federalist approach to abortion this cycle is to tie every state-level restriction to the presumptive GOP nominee. That’s a clear indication that President Joe Biden’s party still views abortion as a winning issue this election cycle as the 81-year-old incumbent continues to lag behind his GOP opponent in most swing-state polls.
On the stump, Democrats up and down the ballot constantly remind voters that Trump-nominated Supreme Court justices overturned Roe v. Wade and that, during his presidency, the presumptive GOP nominee backed unsuccessful Senate GOP–led efforts to pass a federal ban on abortion at 20 weeks.
To weather those attacks in this post-Dobbs political environment, House and Senate Republicans’ 2024 campaign chiefs have urged candidates and vulnerable incumbents not to run away from the abortion issue so that voters know where they stand.
Shortly after the Alabama supreme court’s February ruling, the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s (NRSC) executive director sent a memo to the GOP’s crop of 2024 recruits urging them to “clearly and concisely reject efforts by the government to restrict IVF.” The memo cited polling conducted by longtime Republican strategist and pollster Kellyanne Conway that suggests access to fertility treatments is popular with most Americans.
“IVF can be a very important option for families who are struggling with fertility, and we need to protect the rights of those families to use IVF,” NRSC chairman Steve Daines told National Review in the U.S. Capitol last month. “We don’t want to let the Democrats politicize this issue. So that’s what we needed to say clearly, that we support IVF and protect parents’ rights to be able to use that option.”
Republican senators Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Katie Britt (R., Ala.) introduced legislation this week to protect access to IVF nationwide by preventing states from receiving Medicaid funding if they ban the procedure. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, the senators say their bill is designed to address “confusion and misinformation” in the wake of the Alabama supreme court’s ruling, even after Alabama’s Republican governor Kay Ivey signed a law in March protecting IVF clinics from liability for damage to or the death of embryos.
House Speaker Mike Johnson recently told Politico he will not bring any abortion-related legislation to the floor before the election. He also said he does not anticipate passing a federal abortion ban if Republicans hold the House and retake the Senate now that Trump has said the issue is “in the states’ purview now.”
But in a clear effort to keep reproduction-related messaging at the forefront of election coverage this cycle, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said this week that he plans to bring the “Right to Contraception Act” bill to the floor next month, even though access to contraception is already protected.
Schumer’s announcement follows comments from Trump, who suggested in an interview Tuesday that his campaign was “looking at” how to address contraception legislation at the state level. When asked whether he favors limiting “restrictions on a person’s right to contraception,” Trump told a Pennsylvania news station: “I’m going to have a policy on that very shortly. And I think it’s something that you’ll find interesting, and it’s another issue that’s very interesting, but you will find it, I think, very smart. I think it’s a smart decision.” Trump quickly walked back those comments, posting on social media Tuesday that he has “never, and will never advocate imposing restrictions on birth control.”
Senate Democrats’ campaign arm has spent recent months hammering Republicans on abortion and IVF in ads and memos. The Hill reports that the Democratic super PAC Progress Action Fund put $250,000 in an Arizona TV and digital ad called “Republicans Stealing Your Baby,” which depicts a Republican congressman taking a baby away from a couple who conceived using IVF.
“Obviously, when it comes to all things abortion, they’re going to throw everything, including the kitchen sink, at the wall,” says GOP strategist and former Trump 2020 surrogate Ford O’Connell. “Because among the top five issues that are likely to decide this election, this is the only issue that they have an advantage on.”
A recent Fox News poll found that voters trust Trump to do a better job on the economy, immigration, crime, and foreign policy, while respondents trust Biden on abortion, health care, and election integrity.
“Voters are going to want to talk about inflation. They want to talk about chaos around the world,” Arizona-based GOP strategist Brian Seitchik tells NR. “So, talking about the fear of IVF being taken away is going to ring hollow to a lot of voters.”
Around NR
• Figures from the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank show why Trump is leading Biden in most swing states right now, says Dan McLaughlin. Household net worth is up just 0.7 percent through Biden’s first three years, compared to 16 percent through Trump’s first three years.
This fall, if Americans feel like their household net worth is increasing, they’re likely to reelect Biden. If they feel like they’re treading water or that everything is harder to afford, they’re likely to reelect Trump. This isn’t the only factor, but it’s the biggest factor.
• A scoop from Audrey Fahlberg reveals that Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign has hired Corey Lewandowski, the presumptive GOP nominee’s 2016 campaign manager, to advise the national party’s 2024 delegate and convention process:
“He’s very helpful to me, and he’s helpful to the RNC, and he’s helpful to the president,” Trump’s 2024 campaign adviser Chris LaCivita told NR.
• Biden’s speechwriters are struggling to reconcile their conflicting motivations, writes Noah Rothman, after Biden delivered a bleak address to the graduates of Morehouse College last weekend:
The Biden campaign hopes to mobilize unenthusiastic black voters by convincing them that, no matter how bad things are under this president, they could always be worse. And who knows? That worked for Barack Obama. But as an electoral strategy, Biden’s is fraught. The president wants us to believe that the American social fabric is coming apart, and it will only fray further absent dramatic changes to the status quo. If Biden is not careful, a critical mass of voters might agree with him.
• Former Maryland governor Larry Hogan is rebranding as pro-choice as he looks to fill Maryland’s U.S. Senate seat. While serving as governor in 2022, Hogan vetoed a state law to expand access to abortion, but the legislature overrode his veto. Now, Hogan says that “no one should come between a woman and her doctor.” Caroline Downey has more here.
• Jim Geraghty considers the possibility that Democrats could skip their planned convention this summer. Representative Dean Phillips (D., Minn.) suggested that a cancellation would be in the party’s best interest because of ongoing protests against the Biden administration’s Israel policy.
“Forego the convention”? Canceling the convention now would represent an abject surrender to the forces of chaos, a de facto admission that the city of Chicago is now so ungovernable and unsafe, and the anti-Israel protesters are so menacing and violent, that not even the safety of the president of the United States can be guaranteed.
To sign up for The Horse Race Newsletter, please follow this link.