This is a lightly adapted version of a piece first published on Jill Filipovic’s Substack—subscribe to that here.

Earlier this month, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos kept frozen at a fertility clinic are actually “extrauterine children” and therefore considered people under Alabama law. In response, Alabama fertility clinics are predictably pausing some of their operations, recognizing that fertility medicine as it’s widely practiced may now be extremely legally risky and potentially even criminal in this new “pro-life” legal landscape.

Anti-abortion groups unsurprisingly see this as a win and plan to push for more. Denise Burke, senior counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom, an anti-abortion group that has been a key architect of abortion bans nationwide, told the New York Times that the decision was “a tremendous victory for life.” Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life, told the Times, “I can’t name one pro-life group that I know of that would say that they are OK with the I.V.F. procedure.”

And it’s these same anti-abortion groups hoping to end IVF and deem any fertilized egg a person who have the ear of Donald Trump, and are helping to create his second-term strategy.

Trump learned some important lessons from his first term. Chief among them: Don’t cater to or staff your team with moderates or “reasonable” Republicans. Find people with the ability and inclination to carry out your desires, no matter who objects or what it costs the nation.

The people who have stepped up to the plate are Christian nationalists and newly emboldened anti-abortion groups—although “anti-abortion” doesn’t even cover it, given that these same groups are working to scale back access to reproductive health care including contraception and fertility treatments. And none of this is a secret; they’ve literally published a playbook on their strategy.

Leading the effort to force through far-right legislation, democracy be damned, is the Heritage Foundation. It’s also working with a series of other groups, including just about every major anti-abortion organization, to radically reshape the government and the country. The next president, these groups write in their Mandate for Leadership, must enshrine conservative values and crush liberal ones, starting by “deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (‘SOGI’), diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.”

And that’s just the start. Some of the most extreme anti-abortion groups, including those that oppose IVF and many forms of contraception, have the ear of the man they........

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