Why Pro-Life Republicans Are Tripping Up Over IVF
Speaker Mike Johnson’s response to the IVF controversy is at odds with his long record of saying human life begins at conception.
MIKE JOHNSON, THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE, claims to have a clear and compelling moral position: Human life begins at conception and must be legally protected. Johnson thinks people who disagree with him on this issue are incoherent. How they can defend babies outside the womb, he asks, while treating babies inside the womb as expendable?
But now Johnson has a problem of his own. He says he supports in vitro fertilization, a technique that, as generally practiced in the United States, involves the creation, long-term cold storage, and disposal of surplus embryos. How can he defend embryos inside the womb while treating embryos outside the womb as expendable?
FOR MANY YEARS, Johnson worked as an attorney for and with the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal organization that later changed its name to the Alliance Defending Freedom. In 2013, Johnson and other ADF-affiliated attorneys filed a lawsuit on behalf of Louisiana College, a pro-life institution that had previously employed Johnson, against federal regulations which—according to the lawsuit—required employer health insurance plans “to provide free coverage of contraceptive services, including so-called ‘emergency contraceptives’ that cause early abortions.” The lawsuit alleged that some drugs and devices covered by the regulations, including Plan B, ella, and some IUDs, were “known abortifacients, in that they can cause the death of an embryo by preventing it from implanting in the wall of the uterus.” The attorneys explained:
[Louisiana College] has a sincere religious objection to providing or facilitating coverage for Plan B because it believes the drug would prevent a human embryo, which it believes is a human being from the moment of conception/fertilization (including before it implants in the uterus), from implanting in the wall of the uterus, causing the death of the embryo. . . .
LC has a sincere religious objection to providing or facilitating coverage for ella because it believes the drug would either prevent a human embryo from implanting in the uterine wall, or could cause the death of a recently implanted embryo. . . .
LC believes and teaches that abortion, or methods that harm an embryo from the moment of conception/fertilization, ends a human life and is a sin.
Actually, these drugs and devices primarily work by suppressing ovulation.1 But the lawsuit focused on their secondary mechanism—that is, making it more difficult for an embryo to implant—and argued that any obstruction of implantation was a form of killing. Two months later, at a forum hosted by Louisiana Right to Life, Johnson made it clear that he shared this view.
Everybody asks this all the time: “Why do you guys care so much? I mean, the HHS mandate—it’s really just about contraception, sterilization. If you don’t want to do it, don’t do it, you know. What’s the big deal?” Well, those are abortifacients, in many [cases]. The morning-after pill, as we know, is an abortifacient.
In 2016, Johnson was elected to Congress, and in 2017, he cosponsored the Life at Conception Act. The bill declared that personhood, including a constitutionally guaranteed right to life, applied to “every member of the species homo sapiens” from “the moment of fertilization, cloning,” or any other mechanism of creation. By referring to cloning, Johnson and his colleagues signaled that their intent was to protect embryos in labs and clinics, not just in the womb.
Johnson cosponsored the same legislation in 2019, 2021, and 2023. And in speeches and hearings, he emphasized that life began at conception, not implantation. For example, at a hearing in 2019, he explained:
We know that when a human sperm meets and fertilizes a human egg at the moment of conception, there becomes an unborn, living, genetically distinct, and biologically self-directed human being. . . . [T]here is no such thing as a “potential” human being. There are only human beings from the moment of conception.
Since then, Johnson has continued to focus on conception as the point at which a human being acquires rights. In 2022, he introduced the Unborn Child Support Act, reasoning that “a pregnant mother should be able to seek child support for the unborn child dating all the way back to the moment of conception.”
Johnson has also challenged the idea that the value of a new human being should depend on its location. At a hearing in 2021, he interrogated witnesses about late-term abortion, asking: “If it is not okay to take the life of a small child outside the womb, why is it okay to take the life of a small child nine inches up the birth canal, inside the womb? What is the distinction?”
THESE QUESTIONS AND ARGUMENTS are sometimes hard to answer. But now it’s Johnson who has to answer them, because they’ve been carried to a conclusion he doesn’t like.
On February 16, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that a wrongful death statute in Alabama applied to IVF embryos that were destroyed due to alleged negligence. The justices described these embryos as “several embryonic children, each of whom was created through in vitro fertilization” and “had been kept alive in a cryogenic nursery while they awaited implantation.”
Like Johnson, the justices stipulated that “an unborn child is a genetically unique human being whose life begins at fertilization.” They also pointed out that
neither the text of [Alabama’s] Wrongful Death of a Minor Act nor this Court’s precedents exclude extrauterine children from the Act’s coverage. Unborn children are “children” under the Act, without exception based on developmental stage, physical location, or any other ancillary characteristics.
Based on this reasoning, the court concluded that medical facilities could be sued for allowing the wrongful deaths of IVF embryos. In response, to avoid liability, clinics across the state suspended IVF procedures.
Several pro-life organizations, including ADF, Live Action, Students for Life, and Americans United for Life, celebrated the ruling. Speaking for ADF, senior counsel Denise Burke thanked the court for affirming that “unborn children created through assisted reproductive technology are children under Alabama law and therefore protected” from “the moment of conception.” National Right to Life News observed that the Alabama case “underscores one of the most significant problems with IVF, as countless embryonic preborn children are created and then discarded when they are deemed unfit or unwanted.”
But Johnson declined to issue such a statement. Instead, like other Republican politicians, he did what GOP strategists recommended in polling memos: He endorsed IVF and called on Alabama lawmakers to solve the liability problem so the clinics could get back to work. In a statement, Johnson declared: “I applaud the Alabama Legislature for immediately working to protect life and ensure that IVF treatment is available to families throughout the state.”
Johnson didn’t specify what he was applauding. But apparently, he was referring to a bill proposed by Tim Melson, the Republican chairman of the Alabama Senate Healthcare Committee. On Thursday—the day before Johnson issued his statement—the Alabama Reflector reported that Melson was preparing legislation to shield IVF clinics from wrongful-death liability. Melson, who has previously voted to ban abortions even in cases of rape, told the paper that an IVF embryo is “not going to form into a life until it’s put into the uterus.” The draft text of his bill decrees that under Alabama law,
any human egg that is fertilized in vitro shall be considered a potential life but shall not be considered for any purposes a human life, a human being, a person, or an unborn life unless and until the fertilized egg is implanted into a woman’s uterus and a viable pregnancy can be medically detected.
That’s a direct repudiation of everything Mike Johnson has said about embryos, fertilization, and implantation.
IF JOHNSON AND OTHER PRO-LIFERS want to embrace IVF, that’s great. But then they need to explain why—having adopted implantation, not conception, as their new standard for defining a human life—they’re still opposing contraceptives that might interfere with implantation.
Right now, for instance, Oklahoma is considering legislation—drafted in collaboration with ADF—that would make it illegal to “knowingly administer to, prescribe for, or sell to any pregnant woman any medicine, drug, or other substance with the specific intent of causing or abetting an abortion.” The bill defines permissible drugs as those that are “not used, sold, prescribed, or administered with the specific intent to cause or induce an abortion or to prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg.”
Does Johnson agree with this bill? Does he still believe, as ADF apparently does, that preimplantation embryos have a right to life? Does he still think that “there is no such thing as a ‘potential’ human being”? Or does he agree with Melson and other IVF supporters that preimplantation embryos, if they’re outside the womb, are only “potential life” and can be discarded?
And does it come down to context? Does Johnson think preimplantation embryos are worthy of protection if they’re threatened by contraception but expendable if they’re sacrificed in the course of assisted procreation?
Like many other pro-lifers who find themselves in an awkward position on IVF—a position that’s politically expedient but inconsistent with their legislative records and their past pronouncements—Johnson has a lot of questions to answer.
IUDs generally work by stymieing sperm, but the 2013 lawsuit seems to be referring specifically to those hormonal IUDs that have additional effects, often including preventing ovulation.