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WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — “Moderate” Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina declared his opposition on Tuesday to the Alabama Supreme Court’s recognition that frozen human embryos are children, falsely suggesting in the process that human life does not begin at conception.
“One thing I’ve learned, that nobody’s ever been born in a freezer that I know of,” Graham told Politico. “You’re not going to be born in a freezer. A fertilized egg has to be implanted into a biological woman, then you can have a baby.”
He went on to say he was working on “15, maybe 16 weeks as a national limitation” on abortion based on fetal pain and the “need to be a humane country,” while stressing that “in terms of fertility clinics, if you’re pro-life you want these things to function [because] they actually provide people with children who have a hard time otherwise. So I don’t want to do anything to shut that down.”
Since the Alabama ruling, IVF industry apologists and allies in the abortion lobby have quickly acted to make IVF a national issue, while Democrats have attempted to stoke voters’ fears about IVF restrictions and use the opportunity to advance radical anti-life legislation.
Graham had previously said that “there will be a correction of the Alabama ruling by the state legislature in Alabama” to “keep these clinics open,” and the legislature has since overwhelmingly passed legislation affirming that “no action, suit, or criminal prosecution shall be brought or maintained against any individual or entity providing goods or services related to in vitro fertilization except for an act or omission that is both intentional and not arising from or related to IVF services.”
Graham’s embrace of the IVF industry ignores the fact that the process is fraught with ethical peril, as it entails the conscious creation of scores of “excess” embryonic humans only to be killed and human lives being treated like commodities to be bartered over. It has been estimated that more than a million embryos are frozen in storage in the United States following IVF, and that as many as 93 percent of all embryos created through IVF are eventually destroyed. A 2019 NBC News profile of Florida IVF practitioner Craig Sweet acknowledged that his practice has discarded or abandoned approximately a third of the embryos it places in cold storage.
His rationale also flies in the face of long-settled biological criteria and mainstream medical textbooks affirming that a living human being, structurally and genetically distinct from his or her mother, is created upon fertilization and is present throughout the entirety of pregnancy regardless of whether that embryonic human is being artificially sustained outside of the womb.
This is not in serious dispute; in 2019, University of Chicago Department of Comparative Human Development graduate Steve Jacobs found that 96 percent of more than 5,500 biologists he surveyed agreed, despite them overwhelmingly identifying as “liberal,” “pro-choice,” and Democrats, and a majority identifying as “non-religious.” Many abortionists and pro-abortion activists and philosophers admit as much, granting preborn babies’ humanity while either asserting that a mother’s “bodily autonomy” trumps her baby’s rights or making the loaded claim that some humans do not necessarily count as “persons.”
Graham’s invocation of implantation, meanwhile, falls for a manipulation of semantics by activists in the medical establishment. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), a purportedly impartial medical authority that in reality is heavily pro-abortion, redefined “conception” in the 1960s to refer to implantation rather than fertilization for the purpose of making contraception more culturally acceptable.
Even so, a 2011 survey found that most OB/GYNs continued to say life begins at fertilization, not implantation. In terms of when life begins, implantation only provides the already-existing embryo a safe environment to develop in; it does not fundamentally transform what the embryo is.
Graham is a “moderate” who has long frustrated conservatives due to his stances on issues like illegal immigration and “bipartisan” support for Democrat nominees, although in recent years Graham has attempted to ingratiate himself to some on the right by making himself one of former President Donald Trump’s biggest boosters, support which Trump reciprocates.
On IVF, however, Graham is far from alone within his ostensibly pro-life party.
Pro-life activists hope, and pro-abortion activists fear, that the Alabama ruling could force the beginning of conversations about expanding recognition and protection of the preborn to those created and discarded by IVF. Yet many Republicans, including Trump and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, have rushed to declare their support for IVF, fearing the political ramifications of being branded as opposing the practice.
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