Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has clarified his support for in vitro fertilization as debate over the procedure continues in the U.S.
“I believe that IVF is important — and that we allow and protect IVF for families,” Lee said during a recent media availability. “It’s a part of what I believe as being pro-life.”
He emphasized that the procedure is already legal and protected in the state. That’s the argument lawmakers made earlier this year, when they considered — and killed in committee — a Democrat-sponsored bill. It would have adjusted the state’s abortion ban language to clarify it doesn’t pertain to contraceptives or IVF.
One of its authors, Rep. Harold Love, D-Nashville, pre-filed a similar bill for the coming session a few weeks ago. High-ranking Republican lawmakers will decide whether to give it a hearing when the legislative session kicks off in January.
On the state and federal level, rhetoric around IVF intensified throughout 2024. It became one of the many reproductive health issues that presidential candidates focused on near the end of their campaigns.
“We really are the party for IVF,” President-Elect Donald Trump said during a Fox News event in October. “We want fertilization that is all the way, and the Democrats tried to attack us on it, and we’re out there on IVF, even more than them.”
Although most Tennessee Republicans support IVF access, there is a sizable portion who don’t, according to the semiannual Vanderbilt Poll published in May.
Among the registered voters who responded, 82% said they believed the service should be legal. Democratic respondents showed the highest rate of IVF support, with 94%. The poll split GOP voters into two groups: non-MAGA Republicans and MAGA-Republicans. The latter reported the lowest level of support, with 69% saying IVF should be legal.
One major conservative organization with ties to Tennessee formally denounced in vitro fertilization earlier this year: the Southern Baptist Convention. The Tennessean reported debate was tense. Supporters said that frozen embryos were people, and clinics treat them without dignity. Some criticize the treatment because it allows gay couple and single women to have children.
The SBC is based in Nashville. Nearly 850,000 Tennesseans are members of the Southern Baptist church, according to Lifeway Christian Resources. That places the state in the top five nationally.
Votes on extra IVF protections
On both the state and federal level, Democratic lawmakers have introduced laws to more clearly protect IVF.
Congress voted down a bill creating more protections in September. Critics said the treatment is already legal. Some Republicans, such as South Dakota’s U.S. Sen. John Thune, said the bills were introduced in bad faith.
“This is simply an attempt by Democrats to try and create a political issue where there isn’t one,” he said, according to NPR.
In Tennessee and other states, these IVF bills were filed early in the year. But the hearings picked up after a controversial court opinion dropped in February. The Alabama Supreme Court ruled frozen embryos were legally people. Under that logic, the common practice of discarding unused embryos could be considered murder.
Tennessee’s House Bill 2227 was filed in January of this year, and it got a hearing before the House’s subcommittee on population health in March.
A few residents came and testfied before the committee, advocating for the bill’s passage. That included Courtney Joslin, a policy analyst for the right-of-center organization R Street.
“You may hear from some that this shouldn’t need clarification, but I can assure you that it does,” she said.
She referenced several news stories about how, after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, residents were expressing fears that contraception could be next on the chopping block, or confusion that the bans already did stymie access somehow. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that a third of American adults weren’t sure whether emergency contraceptives like Plan B were legal in their state.
Rep. Bryan Terry, R-Murfreesboro, was one of the bill’s vocal opponents during its hearing. He said the authors claimed to be clarifying the law, but the wording in the bill would make state law even hazier — which could become a problem for state attorneys during a legal challenge.
“When you put confusing language in there, it makes it harder to defend, and it puts the unborn at risk,” Terry said.
Some of the confusion surrounds the term “embryo.” Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti issued an opinion in 2022, saying the state’s abortion law didn’t pertain to unused, frozen embryos — only embryos that have been implanted in a patient’s womb.
Terry said he was concerned the proposal failed to make that distinction.
“As you have this drafted, it does allow abortion,” he said.
Rep. Michele Carringer, R-Knoxville, rejected the idea that state lawmakers needed to respond in any way to legal developments in another state.
“I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard ‘Alabama,'” she said. “We’re living in the state of Tennessee. We do not abide by Alabama’s state laws. We’re the state of Tennessee.”
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