Broad backlash after Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R-AR) quipped about Vice President Kamala Harris’s childlessness demonstrates a real loss of regard for natural, biological motherhood.
In part, it is a product of bipartisan support for in vitro fertilization. The procedure seems to be the new standard for pro-family positioning among members of Congress. Harris’s campaign created a hubbub around “reproductive rights” as the issue with which she most concerns herself. Since Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) introduced the issue to his persona, IVF has stayed onstage.
Access to the artificial fertilization process has been the aim of two bills brought to the Senate over the last few months. Neither bill has passed, each for different reasons: Democrats object to their opponents’ bill leaving IVF open to state-level restriction. Republicans, on the other hand, spotted infringements on religious liberty contained in the Democratic-led bill and also cited “unnecessary overreach” as a point of dissent.
Democrats were quick to decry Senate Republicans’ actions as anti-family. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) responded that “Republicans cannot claim to be pro-family on the one hand, while then voting against IVF protection bills.”
His is the same misunderstanding of IVF and pro-family policy that even many Republican members share. Apart from questions over its morality, IVF does not support family formation and fertility rates. Rather, it promotes first births at older ages and discourages family-focused trajectories for young couples.
Still, Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-SD) said he does not “know of any Republicans not in favor of IVF.” He is probably correct. Earlier in the year, Democrats first presented IVF as a question of women’s rights, then moved to show it as a banal family policy. Republicans agreed — maybe as an effort to quiet unrest, or maybe they honestly believe it. By now, the issue is virtually normalized and incontestable.
Despite the sincerity with which lawmakers discuss IVF as a support for trying families, at its core, it is all about individual choice. It follows that any talk about childless women is fraught.
Sanders noted that her children keep her humble after a day in the spotlight, whereas “Harris does not have anything keeping her humble.”
The Arkansas governor could have been smarter, if only for the sake of former President Donald Trump’s campaign, but her comment stands. One does not have to scrutinize Harris’s degree of humility to see that she has not made sacrifices for the sake of parenthood. She chose more career climbing. As with any choice, it affects her mindset and shrinks her experience otherwise.
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Negative reactions to Sanders’s comments, from Harris’s husband to talk show hosts to a senior Trump campaign adviser, express the general sensitivity of the matter. It stings for others to hear about not because the public ear is unused to comparison or hostility but because there is something intuitively undesirable about a woman not having a child.
There is a difference between women who cannot become pregnant and women who choose against it. The Left wants to put those circumstances on the same plane, and IVF advocacy is one avenue for doing so.