politician who used IVF—tries to ban IVF
If you’re in the business of hypocrisy, there’s been no shortage of it lately.
The only upside of the wild Alabama Supreme Court ruling is that it’s given lawmakers endless opportunities to reveal how clinically insane they sound when they try to explain their own policies back to us. Arcane abortion decisions like this are like a truth serum— they nudge ruthlessly deceptive politicians into telling the truth about their own intentions.
While we’ve had a whole heap of PR fumbles about abortion lately, California Republican Representative Michelle Steel takes the award for Best Performance On Feigning Concern For Her Own Gender.
After seeing her colleague Nikki Haley flip-flop on the ruling and need to embarrassingly reverse her own support for it (because she herself used artificial insemination to have children), Steel took a different approach to save face. She saw her friends walk back their statements, so she astutely disagreed with the decision to begin with, to avoid backlash. “As someone who struggled to get pregnant, I believe all life is a gift. IVF allowed me, as it has so many others, to start my family,” she tweeted last Thursday. “I believe there is nothing more pro-life than helping families have children, and I do not support federal restrictions on IVF.”
The only problem is that while Steel did indeed use IVF, she has also spent the better of the last few years trying to ban it for everyone else. In other words, the congresswoman herself actively tried to pass into law precisely what she claims to be against. Just last year, she along with 166 others members, co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act, which would have given “equal protection” to “preborn” humans, and would have effectively shuttered every fertility clinic in the state. Given that IVF requires securing several embryos to enhance the chance that one will survive the implantation process, doctors wouldn’t be able to continue offering services for families without the threat of arrest.
People tend to call women who support sexist policies anti-feminists, but I think it’s actually the opposite. Women like Steel don’t hate feminism, after all, they thoroughly enjoy the benefits of it. It’s because of feminism that Steel was able to run for office and co-sign bills that rollback women’s rights. It’s because of the work of reproductive rights advocates that she was able to have a family when, and how she wanted to. In that respect, Steel loves gender equality, just not when it’s for other women. Women like Steel want to enjoy the advantages of feminism without the burden of guaranteeing it for everyone else. It’s giving, “I got my IVF by pulling myself up by the bootstraps, you can get yours!” Except she’s actively using their power and position to limit other women’s access to it.
The most generous assessment of Steel’s behavior would be that she genuinely didn’t know that her bill bans IVF, but even that is itself telling. It possibly never even crossed her mind because she knows that her own bills restricting women’s rights wouldn’t ever limit hers.
It’s true. The more money and power you have, the less feminism can feel necessary to you, because you can use your class position to circumvent misogyny. Wealthy women will always have access to abortion and expensive fertility treatments because they can cover the cost of travel and alternative doctors, and if they’re white they’re less likely become entangled in the justice system for doing so. But the poorer you are (and the less white you are) the less you can afford to reject the laws that powerful women don’t even to need to know about (or know that they passed).
Of course, guys shouldn’t be let off the hook either. The men proposing anti-choice laws have also benefited from feminism. I go into specific detail in my book For the Love of Men, but it bears repeating here, that men enjoy the labor performed by women in the reproductive rights movement (disproportionately performed by women of color) too. There isn’t a member of congress who hasn’t benefited from being able to plan the timing and the size of his family, or opt for the choice not to have one entirely. Even if a man is gay or completely celibate, he benefits from living in a society with abortion rights because the oppression of women is directly correlated with an increase in conflict and violence. Anti-abortion laws are a form of state-sanctioned repression and they make us all unsafe, including men.
Given all of this brouhaha, igniting a debate about IVF is the last thing Republicans want during a pivotal election year. More than 80% of Americans support IVF, and more than a third have used fertility treatments themselves. Being against IVF is like being against smart phones. It makes you sound prehistoric and deeply disconnected from reality. Republican leadership can encourage its members to condemn the Alabama decision all they want, but unfortunately for them, their actions (and voting records) speak louder than their hollow words.
Have you needed fertility support? How are you feeling about the Alabama ruling and what it means for the election? Let us know how you’re feeling in the comments.
Before I go, I wanted to let you know that there will be a sharing circle THIS SUNDAY at 9AMPT-NoonET. I’ll be leading our gathering around the topic of optimism. Join us with a pen and paper! I hope you can join us! The zoom link will go out that morning so make sure you’re a paid subscriber so that you don’t miss out.
I hope you’re having a peaceful week.
x Liz