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Jamelle Bouie

By Jamelle Bouie

Opinion Columnist

It is very clear that Republicans were caught off guard this month by a decision the Alabama Supreme Court issued that has jeopardized access to in vitro fertilization treatments in the state, on account of its conclusion that frozen embryos are “extrauterine children” and that I.V.F. clinics can be held liable for their destruction.

When asked for his thoughts, Senator Tommy Tuberville, one of the state’s two Republican senators, struggled to give a coherent answer. “We need to have more kids. We need to have an opportunity to do that, and I thought this was the right thing to do,” he said, seemingly unaware of how the decision might limit access to fertility treatments. “People need to have — we need more kids, we need the people to have the opportunity to have kids,” he went on.

Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador now running for the Republican presidential nomination, made several attempts to answer questions about the ruling. When asked about the Alabama court’s decision last Wednesday, she said that she believed that “an embryo is considered an unborn baby,” affirming the court’s conclusion. When asked again the next day, however, Haley said that she disagreed with the ruling. “I think that the court was doing it based on the law, and I think Alabama needs to go back and look at the law,” she said.

Facing the questions of I.V.F. and fetal personhood on Sunday, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas told CNN that it was a “complex” issue. “I’m not sure everybody has really thought about what all the potential problems are, and as a result no one really knows what the........

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