Tommy Tuberville ‘one hundred percent’ backs Alabama embryo decision

OXON HILL, Md. — Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala. endorsed his state Supreme Court’s ruling that fertilized embryos are children, telling Semafor that the justices were “one hundred percent” correct in a decision that had paused the use of in vitro fertilization.

“We’re talking about life, and when it comes to anything to do with life, we’ve got to protect it,” Tuberville told Semafor before speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

In the case, decided last week, Alabama’s Supreme Court determined that the accidental destruction of fertilized embryos violated the state Wrongful Death Act. “That’s a situation that you never would really think about,” Tuberville said, “but when you start hearing about that, you’ve got to say – wait a minute. That can’t be happening.”

Tuberville, who led a months-long blockade of military nominees in an attempt to change a Biden administration abortion policy, said that the IVF issue should be decided by states; he did not see an obvious federal policy response. Asked about the effect the decision was having on women who had begun to go IVF treatment in Alabama, he demurred.

“I don’t know enough about how that works,” Tuberville said. “I just know the reasoning for a lot of it, and it’s just unfortunate.”

Few Republicans have stuck their necks out on the Alabama decision, which cited the Old Testament as it found a right to life for embryos that are often discarded. On Wednesday, after Nikki Haley told NBC News that she agreed with the decision — “Embryos, to me, are babies” — the Trump campaign had no reaction.

That’s of a piece with how Trump has handled issues around abortion, in the first presidential election since Roe v. Wade was overturned. In public, he’s promised vaguely that he’ll come up with a popular position; in private, according to the New York Times, he’s said that he might back a 16-week limit. But he has not discussed the Alabama case, and in his only interview since the decision was handed down on Feb. 16 — a Fox News town hall in South Carolina — he wasn’t asked about it.

Banning a widely used fertility treatment is a complicated issue for the anti-abortion movement and rarely talked about or prioritized in political campaigns. One of the few Republicans openly endorsing the Alabama court’s reasoning is a home state senator with no serious threat to reelection. The National Republican Senatorial Committee told Playbook after the ruling that none of its candidates endorse banning IVF.

In Politico, Matt Berg recaps reactions to the Alabama decision from Republican governors, who gathered in D.C. on Thursday for media interviews. “You have a lot of people out there in this country that they wouldn’t have children if it weren’t for that,” said Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp.