The SBC Hates IVF
Why fighting for "abortion rights" was never enough
For years, I fought abortion activists to say “reproductive rights” instead of “abortion rights.” Their argument was valid: Refusing to say “abortion rights” could further stigmatize abortion at a time when it is most under threat.
But mine was too: To only fight for abortion rights is too limiting. Extremists are trying to take away more than a woman’s right to end a pregnancy. They’re trying to take away every ounce of agency a woman has to control her own body. This includes the right to birth control, the right to medical treatment for endometriosis and other health issues, the right to decide with her doctor if and when to have a hysterectomy, the right to socially or medically transition, the right to use hormones.
And now, they’ve waged a full-on assault on in vitro fertilization, a method millions of Americans use to conceive children.
On Wednesday, the Southern Baptist Convention voted to condemn IVF. Representing 13 million Americans, the SBC is the largest evangelical organization — and the one with the most political sway. One of the speakers at an early event during the convention stated, IVF is “as immoral as anything we can imagine if we state the proposition clearly.”
By the end of the conference, the majority agreed with him.
You will be surprised by how quickly things will change. In 2021, the SBC passed a resolution stating, “unequivocally that abortion is murder.” Less than a year later, the Dobbs decision ended federal abortion protections. Resolutions passed by the 10,000 SBC delegates often become legislation with lightning-fast speed. That is even more likely to be the case as Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who identifies as a Southern Baptist, grows more and more emboldened. Johnson compared himself to Moses, who delivered the Hebrews out of Egypt in the Old Testament.
Okay, buddy.
The only people Johnson is saving are his rich, white, privileged, elite Christian nationalist friends. Despite the power he has to improve the lives of Americans who live in poverty, who don’t have health care, who should unequivocally have access to fundamental rights, he has said he sees himself a vessel for the will of God — not the will of America.
It was never just about abortion.
They said it themselves on the sixth page of their harrowing right-wing manifesto, Project 2025: “The Dobbs decision was just the beginning.”
Desperate to protect fertility treatments, Democrats rushed to attempt to codify IVF rights into law on Thursday, but Republicans blocked the vote in the Senate. Last week, Senate Republicans killed a similar measure to enshrine a federal right to access contraception.
It was never just about abortion.
It was never just about abortion.
It was never just about abortion.
It was never just about abortion.
It was never just about abortion.
Extremists are moving too fast for America to catch up. Most people don’t realize conservatives have linked abortion and IVF, a common method for infertile couples to conceive. But extremists have made this connection all along, and if anyone had listened to women as we were being accused of being hysterical when Trump was elected, they would have seen it too.
Anti-abortion advocacy group, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, considers the discussions around IVF part of the fight to “safeguard the innocent.” They believe a fertilized egg — even in a test tube — is a baby.
It’s past time we get used to the idea that ALL reproductive rights are at risk — NOT JUST ABORTION. Now that they’ve successfully repealed abortion rights, right-wingers are stripping more protections for women and families, unfurling new phrases and new branding to get us used to their twisted ideas. For example, during the Southern Baptist Convention meeting, the phrase “fetal personhood” kept being used. It’s a way of saying cells don’t even have to be implanted in a woman’s body in order to be considered a person with rights and protections.
A woman, on the other hand, has none in a religious conservative’s universe.
Earlier this year, the state of Alabama halted all IVF treatments after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled frozen embryos are children. This threw fertility clinics across the US in upheaval as doctors, nurses, and legal experts tried to make sense on the implications on health care.
We’re still trying to make sense of it, even after the Alabama legislature took up the issue and tried to hastily restore some rights to couples in the midst of fertility treatments. Months later, fertility in America is still in chaos.
Chaos is conservatives’ best tool against rationality.
Many pastors at this weeks’ SBC gathering expressed reluctance to return to their churches and condemn the science that allowed many of their congregants to grow their families.
“I am for the sanctity of life and for the sanctity of embryos,” one man said. “I’m against the idea that this technology is so wicked that it cannot be employed.”
This level of authoritarian overreach has already cost the SBC its once-booming membership. Once the fastest-growing evangelical group, it has been in sharp decline, falling to a 47-year low. Turns out pushing out any diversity of thought and leaving an ultra-loud, ultra-authoritarian minority to wreak havoc doesn’t attract people to churches.
Who knew?
The SBC has not exactly been a beacon of moral superiority, despite what it thinks about itself. The church group has been scandalized by the same ruinous behavior that cost the Catholic church its reputation and billions of dollars in law suits. Two years ago, a report emerged, documenting numerous sexual assaults of SBC clergymen against parishioners. The documentation went back decades and recorded thousands of incidents of sexual abuse, misconduct, or pastoral abuse. Instead of removing that pastor from leadership — and seeking criminal prosecution when appropriate — the SBC simply moved them from congregation to congregation.
I plan to interview one of those abuse survivors and share her story with you down the line. Let me take a brief pause to acknowledge the pain and torment of spiritual betrayal.
Did the SBC vote on a resolution to condemn that practice? To honor and acknowledge the victims? To adopt better practices to keep criminal pastors away from the people they were supposed to be shepherding.
No.
They overwhelmingly voted against infertile couples using science to become parents. They want this sick and twisted bastardization of Christianity control all of us.
Let’s continue the conversation in the chat. Did you know any of this about the SBC? What is your biggest takeaway?
I’ll end with this short story out of Montana that accurately captures who these people are:
Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Montana, called IVF “morally dubious,” ironically after rumors surfaced that he impregnated a staffer half his age. Did the pregnancy actually happen? No one knows because Rosendale swiftly suspended his campaign for Senate and announced he would no longer serve in the House when his term was up. He posts intermittent Bible verses now about trusting in the Lord now.
That definitely sounds like the words of a man who cheated on his wife with a staffer. The only thing I find implausible about the whole story is that someone would willingly sleep with Matt Rosendale.
We cannot let men like him, who hide their own transgressions behind Bible verses, tell us how to live our lives.
Onward, Democracy Defenders!
Thank you, Tiffany. We really do have to be this clear and well, "strident," that word the guys used to help shut down my generation. As in striding away from lies and toward freedom, and calling it out.
Tiffany I always learn something new from your writings. Thanks for what you do my friend!