Topline
Southern Baptists voted Wednesday to oppose in vitro fertilization, the latest indicator that the issue could become a new crusade for the anti-abortion movement in the post-Roe landscape.
Messengers raise their ballots during a vote at the Southern Baptist Convention June 11, 2024, in ... [+]
Key Facts
The resolution calls on Southern Baptists “to reaffirm the unconditional value and right to life of every human being, including those in an embryonic stage,” The New York Times reported.
The vote was taken at the Southern Baptist Convention in Indianapolis, a gathering of more than 10,000 delegates from the 13 million church members in the U.S. who make up the denomination.
The vote comes after a controversial Alabama Supreme Court ruling in February that effectively granted personhood status to frozen embryos, complicating the routine practice in IVF procedures of discarding unused, frozen embryos.
The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022 was widely viewed as a catalyst for the Alabama Supreme Court decision as it essentially granted states the ability to decide when life begins.
Wednesday’s vote could have broad political implications as evangelicals are a key Republican voting bloc, yet prominent Republicans—including former President Donald Trump, his former Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who are both deeply religious and oppose abortion—voiced their support for IVF in the wake of the Alabama Supreme Court decision.
Tangent
Trump spoke virtually on Monday to attendees of the “Life and Liberty Forum,” hosted by the conservative Danbury Institute in Indianapolis as Southern Baptists gathered there for their annual convention this week. In taped remarks, Trump told the group—which opposes abortion in all cases and has deemed the procedure “child sacrifice”—he would walk “side by side” with its members, urging them not to vote for Democrats, the Washington Post reported. Trump did not mention abortion policy in the address, but his appearance before the group prompted a barrage of criticism from Democrats and the Biden campaign, which highlighted a pledge on the Danbury Institute website that it “will not rest until [abortion] is eradicated entirely.”
Key Background
The Alabama Supreme Court handed down the controversial decision in siding with three couples who filed a wrongful death lawsuit against a Mobile hospital, alleging their frozen embryos were inadvertently discarded. The ruling prompted bipartisan backlash, with Trump calling on the Alabama state legislature to “act quickly to find an immediate solution to preserve the availability of IVF in Alabama,” he wrote on Truth Social. The Republican-led state legislature in March passed a bill that provides civil and criminal immunity for IVF providers, allowing clinics that briefly paused the procedure to resume them, but it did not address the question at the heart of the Supreme Court ruling: whether embryos should be considered children under the law. Republicans have retooled their abortion messaging strategy in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s reversal to cast the issue as one that should be decided at the state-level and have largely abandoned their support for a federal abortion ban.
Surprising Fact
The convention on Wednesday also narrowly rejected a measure to ban women from serving as pastors, reversing a June 2023 preliminary decision.
Further Reading
Southern Baptists Reject Ban On Women Pastors, Even As Majority Supports Ban (Forbes)
Senate Republicans’ Campaign Arm Urges Candidates To Oppose Alabama IVF Ruling (Forbes)
Here Are The Republicans Now Following Trump—And Backing Off A Federal Abortion Ban (Forbes)
