How IVF and abortion access could shape the 2024 election

It's been just over a month since the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children and jeopardized access to in vitro fertilization treatments in the state, bringing the procedure to the forefront of reproductive rights politics. President Joe Biden called on Congress to "guarantee the right to IVF" nationwide in his State of the Union address earlier this month, and Republicans have met a new challenge as they try to signal support for the procedure, during which embryos are often destroyed, while reconciling it with their long-held stance that life begins at conception.

All of this means that IVF — and the anti-abortion views that threatened it in Alabama and could spur similar threats in other states — is helping to shape the coming election season.

As a whole, most American voters are supportive of access to IVF. The vast majority of registered voters, 80 percent, think IVF should be legal, and only 6 percent think it should be illegal, according to a Civiqs/DailyKos poll taken March 9-12. (14 percent were unsure.) And most voters think reproductive health care in general should be easier to access, including 62 percent of all voters and 53 percent of Republicans who think fertility planning like IVF should be easier to access, according to a Navigator poll from Feb. 15-19. When it came to access to abortion pills and in-clinic abortions, Democrats and independents were far more likely to favor increased access, while Republicans were more likely to favor decreased access.

Overall though, since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision in June 2022, many voters have moved to the left on questions of abortion access, and the issue has risen in importance when it comes to voting decisions. Half of voters in the regular Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll from March said they think the 2024 elections will have a "major impact" on access to abortion, and half of Democrats surveyed thought they will have a major impact on access to contraception. Twelve percent of all voters in that survey (including 17 percent of women ages 18 through 49) said abortion is the most important issue in determining their vote this year, while another 52 percent said it was "very important." A YouGov/The Economist poll from March 3-5 similarly found that 77 percent of U.S. adults said abortion was an important issue to them.

https://abcnews.go.com/538/ivf-abortion-access-shape-2024-election/story