EXCLUSIVE — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the GOP’s Senate nominee in the Lone Star State, said that “we need to look more into” in vitro fertilization as the procedure becomes a growing point of contention in the pro-life movement.
Paxton’s comments come two weeks after delegates at the Texas Republican Party’s biennial convention in Houston called for an end to such procedures, which they argue in their platform “destroy embryonic life.” Paxton publicly broke with his party at the time, telling the Texas Tribune that he is a “strong supporter of IVF and pro-family policies.”
Yet Paxton adopted a less absolute position in a Saturday interview on the sidelines of the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Conference in Washington, D.C.
“We need to have restrictions, so that we don’t lose fertilized eggs, if that’s possible, and we need to just examine the issue,” Paxton told the Washington Examiner. “But I know that there are also a lot of couples that couldn’t have children without this, and so you’ve got two competing good things that need to be dealt with.”
Opponents object to IVF because the procedure often creates extra fertilized embryos, which are typically terminated. Yet its proponents, including the parents of some 100,000 babies born each year, argue that they would not be able to have children without it. Paxton said that he wants to look into the “ethics and the morality of doing certain things” as “science and technology move forward.”
Paxton would not commit to whether or not he would support a hypothetical bill establishing national protections for IVF in Congress. Republicans and Democrats alike have introduced legislation ensuring that patients retain access, either by punishing states that restrict it or by establishing a federal statutory right.
“It’s easy to say I’d support a vote, but I would need to read the bill, find out exactly what it does, find out what protections are in there,” Paxton said. “I want couples to be able to have babies, but I also want protection, so I can’t say blanketly I’d support any bill.”
Paxton’s campaign, however, told the Texas Tribune earlier this month that he would cosponsor a pro-IVF bill from Sens. Katie Britt (R-AL) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) if elected.
TRUMP CALLS HIMSELF ‘FATHER OF FERTILITY’ FOR PROTECTING IN VITRO FERTILIZATION
President Donald Trump, who endorsed Paxton before his May primary election with Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), is a strong supporter of IVF. He says that Britt first raised it with him after a 2024 ruling from the Alabama Supreme Court that questioned the procedure’s legality.
A third of Republicans know someone who has used IVF to produce a pregnancy, according to a 2024 poll from Navigator Research.