00:10:30.640And I want to take one step backwards to the first part of your question, which is why is Trump doing this?
00:10:35.460So number one, this election is going to be decided by 6% of voters in six states, right? Like it's a very small group of people that the Harris and Trump campaigns are fighting over. And one of the things we are seeing is that this election is becoming boys versus girls, like in a very serious way.
00:10:54.560The men and boys, young men, are really moving towards Trump, and women are moving towards
00:11:13.840And so he's thinking, how can I just say I like IVF without really addressing the underlying
00:11:19.780issue, which is whether there should be a right to IVF?
00:11:23.380Because an insurance mandate, which, by the way, a whole other conversation, would it even last if he tried to do it? I don't think so. But, you know, an insurance mandate in a world in which IVF is functionally impossible to access is irrelevant.
00:11:40.320And I think that's the tricky language part of this.
00:11:44.980I want to dig into that in a little bit, but I want to pull out something you just said, too, that this election is becoming kind of boys versus the girls.
00:11:53.600And I think that's really interesting because I haven't heard enough about that.
00:20:19.420And two, he's a man with a vasectomy and three children already who think that this is not
00:20:25.580as big of an issue as it is you know and i think when alabama um made ivf functionally inaccessible
00:20:34.560for a short period of time it it it was a big wake-up call for people but a lot of people
00:20:40.240seem to have forgotten it um well people let's remind let's remind ourselves let's remind ourselves
00:20:45.720that people have short memories they have short memories and i think that the republicans had
00:20:52.060pushed a little too hard, and they realized they had to go slower. And one of the things they've
00:20:56.320done with abortion is, you know, it's been 50 years that they have been working to curtail
00:21:01.020access to abortion. They moved really slowly, and they waited for the culture. And they have built
00:21:07.100up this massive power legal infrastructure. And they tried to move too quickly with IVF. And I
00:21:12.800think that was the lesson of Alabama. But the underlying legal issue, it's an this is another
00:21:18.820like very term of art thing, which is fetal personhood. And when you look at fetal personhood
00:21:26.100advocacy, which is what led to IVF becoming inaccessible in Alabama, it's still happening
00:21:32.560all across the country and nationally. And it's actually part of the Republican national platform.
00:21:38.580And so it's frankly the Lulu to think that like, this isn't the plan going forward, right? And
00:21:45.860going back to something we said at the very beginning, Trump didn't say he opposes fetal
00:21:50.920personhood. He didn't say he wants a right to contraception. He didn't say he wants a right
00:21:56.000to IVF. He just said this one random thing that could coexist with these other things, right?
00:22:03.460You could have an insurance mandate and for IVF to be functionally illegal.
00:22:09.200and you know that's what i think is so important to remember that it was just one random thing
00:22:17.640to kind of assuage people that were thinking about maybe going the other way uh because of
00:22:23.720ivf were like no no it's fine it's fine it's fine he said this thing but no one really knows what he
00:22:26.780says um and again because he's very very good with messing around with language and branding
00:22:34.480one thing i want to talk about before because we're gonna we are gonna end this episode with
00:22:38.120good news because you all deserve hope. At the end of every episode, every single day, we will
00:22:44.140end with good news. I want to talk about his running mate for a minute because I don't think
00:22:49.900that J.D. Vance cloaks this at all. I mean, what's he been saying about IVF? Yeah. Well, J.D. Vance
00:22:56.320has said very little, including skipping the vote on the right to IVF bill, right? And J.D. talks a
00:23:03.200lot about family, weirdly a lot about family and women's roles, burying children and caring for
00:23:10.480children. He's weird, like very oddly obsessed with this. And so the fact, you know, they say
00:23:17.920things like we support IVF, IVF is important, family is important, right? But he's also very
00:23:24.280supportive of many extremist Christian nationalist opinions. And I haven't heard anyone talk about
00:23:30.500if he thinks Yale educated lawyer JD thinks that, you know, fertilized eggs should be included in
00:23:37.700the 14th Amendment's definition of a person. I don't, I don't think he's been asked that
00:23:42.080question. And again, it's, it's, where's the next JD Vance rally? Let's go ask him. I mean,
00:23:48.840why isn't anyone just directly asking him this? It's in the Republican national platform. Right.
00:23:54.080And I, and I say this again, because sometimes people are like, they don't really think that,
00:23:56.980no they definitely do like no they do yeah yeah and i mean i think that's a really great talking
00:24:02.880point too um you know right now there's so much confusing and misinformation out there
00:24:09.980that just having a talking point when when you're talking to friends about this stuff if someone
00:24:15.140says they don't really believe that to say no it's in their platform their official platform
00:24:19.620and you know just you know in with your expert hat can you explain to us what the platform is
00:24:25.180Yeah. So when like these parties get together over the summer and they plan their conventions, one of the things that they do is they they write this platform, which is like the top line things that we believe in, that we stand for as a political party.
00:24:40.600Because at the end of the day, political parties are coalitions and there's like lots of different on the Democratic side, a lot more, but lots of different interest groups that fit under it.
00:24:50.160And then they vote on it during the convention and then everyone agrees this is what we as a party stand for.
00:25:04.140And I think what people like so much about it is that it's a written document because
00:25:07.760there's so much like spin zone going on in politics these days and so many like TikTok
00:25:14.120takes that are seemingly disconnected from the actual stance of politicians that, you
00:25:21.100know, Project 2025, it's like very much in writing what these people are planning. And
00:25:28.680when it comes to IVF and the Statement of Fetal Personhood, it's pretty much the same in both
00:25:34.320documents. They're saying, actually, the Republican national platform is slightly stronger,
00:25:38.740which is not only does it say that we think that human life begins at conception, right? There's
00:25:44.600also a House bill that's called the Life at Conception Act that I think has 127 co-sponsors,
00:25:50.760including the Speaker of the House, but it says that the 14th Amendment says so.
00:25:55.180And as a lawyer, and I keep repeating it because it's the thing that sends the most chills through
00:26:00.820my body, because constitutional fetal personhood is like the ultimate bell that can't be unrung.
00:26:08.280Yeah, explain what that means. What does that mean?
00:26:11.920So the 14th Amendment, right, talks about life, liberty, pursuit of happiness,
00:26:16.400just life liberty but um what does it mean to be a person who has liberty in this country
00:26:22.460right now what does it mean to be a person who has rights and freedom right that makes sense
00:26:27.480yeah who gets to like you know you can't murder them you can't take away their rights you can't
00:26:34.840take away their rights to due process most saliently um do there used to be other types
00:26:40.800of people who didn't have those rights i do think i do think there did used to be other types of
00:26:45.760people who didn't have rights in this country um and what they are saying is that a fertilized egg
00:26:51.160should be considered a person for the purpose of the 14th amendment and that person you know in
00:26:56.460that egg fertilized egg embryo because it's not sometimes under the alabama law it wasn't even it
00:27:03.400didn't even have to be an embryo it just had to be a fertilized egg and there's yeah and there's
00:27:07.340a difference there's a there is um you know a little bit of a difference without a distinction
00:27:12.820but like it's it's wild it's not even because right life at conception what does that mean
00:27:18.260theoretically implantation but now they're saying nope just fertilized egg because it's out of you
00:27:23.920know out of a woman's body and in a test tube in an IVF studio that is a person and so if a supreme
00:27:32.700court were to decide that that a fertilized egg is a person then all of the legal regime that goes
00:27:41.380around everything related to reproduction changes. Right, right. Because then then a
00:27:47.720fertilized egg has the exact same rights as a full blown human being, right? Yeah. And you
00:27:54.700couldn't write, you know, the process of IVF is is a process that involves a lot of loss of eggs
00:28:02.260and embryos. Yes. Because it takes, you know, 20 eggs, I've heard to get to one baby. And I mean,
00:28:09.620I think, yeah, the spectrum, the spectrum is so wide.
00:28:12.780I mean, we both have so many friends who have gone through IVF successfully and unsuccessfully.
00:28:20.820I mean, yeah, there is a lot that is happening there that would be completely curtailed by this.
00:28:28.540Then every single time a fertility doctor was implanting multiple embryos into a woman,
00:28:37.080could that woman be held responsible for murder if some don't get implanted? Could the doctor0.98
00:28:42.020have civil liability for, you know, killing children? It seems it, that's what happened
00:28:50.140in Alabama. It wasn't about criminal liability. It was about civil liability. So it was about the
00:28:54.420fact that like, there's no business model when you're constantly at risk for being sued for
00:28:59.320millions of dollars. And like everything we exist in a capitalist system, these fertility doctors
00:29:04.620need to be able to make money and survive. But that's like, the thing about constitutional
00:29:09.300determinations is they're very hard to overturn. It's why conservatives spent 50 years working to
00:29:14.700overturn Roe, right? It's a very, very hard thing to do. And it's one of the reasons I've always
00:29:20.980said, I don't think it would have been a good idea for Democrats to codify Roe before it was
00:29:25.460overturned, because having it as a constitutionally protected right was a much more secure status.
00:29:31.880Things have changed now with the Supreme Court, but, you know, it would be a terrible, terrible thing. And it's most absolutely definitely what Republicans and the Republican Party specifically are working towards.
00:29:44.740Yeah, it's terrifying. It's terrifying. I want to give people just a couple of talking points, a couple of conversation starters here when they're talking to their friends who are either undecided about voting, who are thinking maybe they won't vote at all.
00:30:02.780You know, what are what are just a couple of things that people should take away from this conversation this week?
00:30:09.180Yeah. So, number one, it's always important to just start a conversation with asking someone about what they care about and their issues.
00:30:16.560So if there's someone, you know, especially who has experience with IVF, I actually have a friend who has been talking to one of her friends who's an IVF mama about this for months and months and months.
00:30:27.720That person was a Republican voter and is going to be voting for Kamala Harris this cycle because of the issue of IVF.
00:30:35.140And so once you learn that they care about these issues and want to talk about the politics of it, be like, did you know that the Republican national platform, you know, it includes this idea of fetal personhood, which would make IVF illegal?
00:31:40.640And if the person wants to talk about it and you can say, like, imagine how different this
00:31:45.460would be if each of those, if your doctor had legal liability for each one of those
00:31:51.440embryos and could get sued for murder. Yes. And I think that one of the places this often ends up
00:31:58.280is like, they'll never go there. They'll never go there. And one of the things we have started
00:32:05.600to have with abortion is stories of how they will go there, of 10-year-old girls who can't access
00:32:12.280abortion services, of women who are bleeding out in emergency rooms and unable to access care. I
00:32:19.520I mean, I keep going back to the Idaho Supreme Court case where they said bleeding out and losing a uterus is not a sufficient risk that justifies getting an abortion.
00:32:32.580You have to be bleeding out and about to die to be able to qualify for getting an abortion.
00:32:37.380And that was their argument at the Supreme Court of the United States.
00:32:40.980It wasn't this isn't like some fringe person.
00:33:08.660And that legislation could change any minute, right?
00:33:11.820Like it's a it's a bell that they rang that they can unring. It's an easy control Z. In the same way it was easy for them to do it, it's easy for them to undo it. And it's created a ton of inability to to know what the future is. Right. I know someone in Alabama who her fertility doctor is still not working.
00:33:32.200She's not able to get any fertility care right now because they're like worried that the law is going to change and they're going to be able to get retroactively sued.
00:33:41.100We're seeing in places like Louisiana, they are having lots of problems.
00:33:46.180They have to transfer all of the embryos out of state.