EXCLUSIVE: Pro-Life Groups Urge Catholic GOP Governor To Veto ‘Extreme’ IVF Bill

A coalition of pro-life groups led by CatholicVote and Nevada Right to Life urged Nevada Republican Governor Joe Lombardo to veto a bill that would mandate a right to in vitro fertilization, saying that the legislation would be ethically and fiscally reckless. 

In a letter delivered to Lombardo on Tuesday, nearly two dozen pro-life and Christian organizations asked the Catholic governor to veto SB 217, a Democrat-backed bill that would create a right to IVF and require public and private health insurance companies to cover the procedures. Opponents fear that the bill would shield the IVF industry from any accountability for questionable bioethical practices and cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. 

“We approach the issue of IVF from varying perspectives. While we are broadly supportive of the general principle of helping families struggling with infertility to conceive, IVF is bioethically and economically problematic. Healthcare must be sensibly regulated,” the pro-life groups wrote in the letter, which was first obtained by The Daily Wire. 

In addition to CatholicVote Vice President Josh Mercer, other signatories include Nevada Right to Life Executive Director Melissa Clement, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, Democrats for Life Executive Director Kristen Day, and Moms for America Director Eva Sara Landau.

“The IVF industry currently operates in a wild west, with little to no regulation or restraint on its activities. It is already legal in Nevada. The bill would allow IVF practitioners to operate with complete impunity and hinder the state’s ability to enact health and safety regulations to protect women undergoing what is already a physically and mentally taxing process,” the advocates wrote.

They added that they appreciated Lombardo’s previous actions to “veto unreasonable and often extreme measures from the legislature.”

SB 217, which is also opposed by Nevada’s Republican Party, is estimated to cost at least $38 million in its first two years. 

The bill would also put into law that “a fertilized egg or human embryo that exists before implantation in a human uterus is not a person for legal purposes.” Lawmakers across the country have moved to shield the IVF industry after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that frozen embryos should be recognized and protected as children. 

Tommy Valentine, director of the Catholic Accountability Project at CatholicVote, told The Daily Wire that SB 217 would allow the IVF industry to operate with virtually no safeguards in place.

“This bill would give the industry carte blanche to act recklessly. Let’s not forget that this bill is an unfunded mandate which will cost the state tens of millions of dollars per year and increase healthcare premiums for Nevadans,” he said. “It was passed in literally the 11th hour along party lines. A Republican governor should not be signing a bill like this, and we hope he will not.”