Alabama's targeting of IVF is the Christian right's attempt to control motherhood

Former Gov. Nikki Haley, R-S.C., gets a lot of glowing coverage simply because she occasionally criticizes Donald Trump in her fruitless presidential primary run against him. So it was rattling for many when, on Wednesday, Haley reminded everyone she's ensconced in the fringe worldview of the Christian right. When asked about a recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling that is expected to destroy in vitro fertilization (IVF) in the state and threatens access across the country, Haley told CNN she agreed with the decision, claiming to believe frozen embryos are "babies."

The Republican-controlled court in Alabama ruled on Friday that lab-created human embryos are "children." Setting aside the odd details of this specific case, the ruling treats the loss of embryos, typically part of the IVF process, as the equivalent of child murder. The University of Alabama at Birmingham's Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility has already canceled all IVF treatment out of fear that "our patients and our physicians could be prosecuted criminally or face punitive damages."

Haley, for her part, seems surprised by the blowback and has been scrambling with nonsensical claims that she was only talking about "parental rights" when she initially supported the extreme ruling, ignoring the fact that parents have no right to kill babies in any of the 50 states.

A lot of people are understandably shocked to learn that the anti-abortion movement also hates IVF. After all, the movement claims to be all about motherhood. One would think the people who are always yammering on about how a woman's greatest purpose is giving birth would celebrate those who endure IVF, which is both painful and expensive, just so they can have a baby. But no, the Christian right wants to end IVF for two reasons: First, because of the bottomless misogyny and homophobia that fuels the movement. Second, because the end goal for the Christian right is to turn the U.S. into a theocracy, and banning IVF helps them get there.

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It's important to understand that what the Christian right really wants is not motherhood, per se, but a social order where women are second class citizens. They take a dim view of not just abortion and contraception, but all reproductive technologies that make it easier for women to exercise autonomy over their lives. There's a widespread perception that IVF is primarily used by lesbians, single women, and women who waited until their 30s to get married. (In reality, there are many reasons, including male infertility.) Conservatives view IVF as a cheat code for feminists who want to have children on their own terms. They would prefer a system where the only path to motherhood is being trapped with a Trump-voting husband who controls your checking account so you can't leave.

It's hard to convey to non-nutty people how obsessively angry conservatives are with women who wait until they're independent adults before they marry. On a recent episode on Charlie Kirk's popular anti-feminist podcast, for instance, he and his all-male panel were raging about (what else?)Taylor Swift dating NFL player Travis Kelce. "Does Taylor Swift have any eggs left?" Kirk sneeringly asked, as if interrogating the fallopian tube status of pop stars was a normal thing that red-blooded American men talk about.

Dig around in conservative media and it swiftly becomes evident that concern about embryo "life" is not really what's bothering them about IVF. "[T]he traditional family is under unprecedented assault," screeched the opening line of a 2022 National Review article about IVF, under the headline, "Our Looming Procreative Anarchy." The same author earlier complained about women who use IVF to have children slightly later in life, denouncing women who use medical technology for "fulfillment of personal lifestyle desires." At the Christian nationalist First Things site in 2021, the writer argued that IVF is not "biblical" because, "In the natural course of things, we are conceived in a single, unrepeatable act of love between male and female."

I have many questions, including the use of "unrepeatable," which is not how most couples experience sex. Or how this writer explains all the pregnancies that occur when people who aren't in love have sex. But I am amused at how he complains, "Sanctioning masturbation for the sake of collecting sperm is -dubious." A not-small part of the hostility to fertility treatments on the right is that it often requires men to subject their sexual organs and processes to medical examination, a humiliation that otherwise tends to be mostly restricted to women.

So yeah, it's about sexism. It's definitely not about a sincere concern for embryonic life. As Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post wrote this week, Republicans keep backing policies to kick pregnant women off health insurance and deprive them of nutritional assistance. Even if they only cared for the "unborn child," these policies make no sense, as these deprivations are more likely to kill or harm the developing fetus than the person carrying the pregnancy. No, this is about restricting reproductive health access to force everyone onto the life path they deem the only "correct" one: young marriage and childbirth, rendering women financially dependent on their husbands. Indeed, the same ascientific claims about "life" are being leveraged to create a legal pretext to ban birth control, as feminist journalist Jill Filipovic outlined in late 2022.

While misogyny and homophobia are most of it, there's an even deeper, unsettling level to this Supreme Court decision: It's part of a larger plan to turn the U.S. into a Christian theocracy. Alabama's Chief Justice Tom Parker made this clear in his opinion, repeatedly citing the Bible and explicitly stating the state constitution has a "theologically based view." As Ruth Marcus wrote in the Washington Post, "Welcome to the theocracy."

Parker made this even more explicit in a recent interview with Johnny Enlow, a self-proclaimed "prophet" and Christian nationalist. Speaking with Enlow, Parker argued that "God created government" and spoke of the so-called "Seven Mountain Mandate" that the far-right uses as a blueprint for an American theocracy.

As Fred Clarkson recently explained in Salon, this is "a vision of Christian dominion over what they call the "seven mountains": religion, family, education, government, media, entertainment and business." Thus the obsession with Taylor Swift's ova count. Asserting this dominion over Swift's body hits at least 4 of the 7 mountains they believe far-right Christians should exclusively control.

Ultimately, theocracy, like all authoritarian systems, loves imposing arbitrary and cruel rules on the most private parts of people's lives. It's the ultimate expression of power, after all, to micromanage something as personal as how and when someone has a baby. If they could litigate the sexual positions you were "allowed" to conceive in, they would. (And don't rule it out yet!) It's about enforcing gender hierarchies, yes. But it's also about not permitting people any sense of ownership over their own lives and bodies. Every ovum must be accounted for in this religious right version of Big Brother.