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Abortion occurs when a woman does not wish to continue a pregnancy; IVF occurs because a woman would do almost anything to begin one. Conflating the two is both medically inaccurate and morally wrong, writes Brittany Baker.<\/p>\n
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Two years ago, I wrote in these pages that IVF is pro-life<\/a>.<\/p>\n Since then, I have become a mother.<\/p>\n My daughter is seven months old. When I look at her, I don’t see a political talking point. I see the answer to years of prayers, the result of modern medicine and exactly the kind of life my party claims to champion.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n I spent much of my career serving conservative leaders \u2014 writing speeches in the U.S. Senate and working in the west wing under President Donald Trump. I believe in limited government, personal freedom and strong families. Those convictions are precisely why I support in vitro fertilization, or IVF. And they are precisely why what’s happening in Texas should alarm every Republican who takes those values seriously.<\/p>\n This month, delegates to the Texas GOP convention<\/a> adopted a platform calling on lawmakers to prohibit practices associated with IVF, claiming it threatens fetal life.<\/p>\n But IVF is not abortion. It does not end a pregnancy \u2014 it intends to create one. For millions of Americans, including my family, IVF is the only reason a child exists at all.<\/p>\n What is also deeply frustrating is that the politicians driving this issue have never lived it. They speak about IVF as if it were a simple procedure. It isn’t. It is months \u2014 often years \u2014 of physical, emotional and financial sacrifice in pursuit of one goal: bringing a baby into the world.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n My husband and I navigated infertility diagnoses, surgeries, endless appointments and more than 200 injections. Every embryo was hope. Every failed transfer was heartbreak. And then, after years of setbacks, one transfer worked.<\/p>\n That embryo became my daughter.<\/p>\n I have lived this. I know what it costs \u2014 emotionally, physically, financially. That is why I cannot stay silent while elements of the Texas Republican Party try to make her existence a political target.<\/p>\n Let’s be honest about what IVF restrictions actually mean: fewer families, fewer pregnancies, fewer babies. That is not a pro-life outcome. It is the opposite.<\/p>\n Some in my party have become so determined to view every issue through the lens of abortion that they can no longer distinguish between ending a pregnancy and helping create one. That isn’t pro-life. It is ideological rigidity masquerading as principle.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The distinction isn’t subtle. Abortion occurs when a woman does not wish to continue a pregnancy; IVF occurs because a woman would do almost anything to begin one. Conflating the two is both medically inaccurate and morally wrong.<\/p>\n Republicans have long argued that government works best when it knows its limits and trusts families to make deeply personal decisions. That principle should apply here. Politicians have no place in the exam room, no business overriding physicians, and no right to stand between hopeful parents and the medical care that could help them build a family.<\/p>\n The Texas GOP platform is badly out of step with the voters it claims to represent. A University of Texas<\/a> poll found that nearly two-thirds of Republican voters in the state oppose banning IVF \u2014 not a liberal talking point, but the measured opinion of the party’s own base.<\/p>\n Trump has repeatedly voiced support for protecting access. Sen. Ted Cruz has backed federal legislation to safeguard it. Even Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton publicly defended IVF after the Alabama controversy<\/a>, when that state\u2019s supreme court ruled in 2024 that frozen embryos are children.<\/p>\n When your position sits to the right of Trump, Cruz and Paxton on a family issue, that isn’t principle. It’s extremism.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The Republican Party should be the party of family formation, innovation and hope. We should be celebrating the technology that helps create families, not legislating it away from the parents who need it most.<\/p>\n My daughter is not a political issue. She is a little girl whose life began because faith, perseverance, medicine and science came together at exactly the right moment. I will never stop being grateful for that. And I will never stop speaking out against efforts to take that same chance away from another family praying for a miracle of their own.<\/p>\n When reasonable voices stay silent, we cede the conversation to the loudest and most extreme among us. This kind of political theater has no place in a party that claims to champion families.<\/p>\n Brittany Baker previously served as deputy chief of staff at the National Economic Council in the White House under President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n