ICYMI: Cruz Supports Extreme Personhood Measure That Would Ban All Abortion
AUSTIN, Texas – As Ted Cruz tries to hide his anti-choice record, new reporting highlights Cruz’s support for personhood measures, which would ban all abortion from conception and impact access to everything from IVF to contraception and IUDs.
See coverage below:
Dallas Morning News: Sen. Ted Cruz unveils IVF protection bill as Democrats continue attacks over issue
On Monday, Allred pointed to Cruz statements touting his opposition to abortion… [in 2016] Georgia Right to Life issued an endorsement of Cruz praising him for pledging to support a “personhood” amendment to the Constitution.
Critics say such personhood proposals that define conception as the beginning of life create barriers to IVF because the procedure often involves the destruction of embryos. That creates liability concerns for IVF providers.
When pressed in 2016 for his position on personhood proposals, Cruz said he didn’t want to get into a back-and-forth on labels.
Chron: Ted Cruz filed IVF protection bill. What about embryo rights?
…More extreme language [had] come to dominate abortion discourse in the run-up to Dobbs and the years since, language that declared abortion to be murder and all fetal and embryonic life sacred. In 2016, Senator Cruz threw his support behind a non-binding resolution declaring fetal personhood, calling the life issue "more than a litmus test...a window to the soul."
"Texas Republicans painted themselves into a corner when they drafted the trigger law [banning abortion should Roe v. Wade be struck down]," [Rice University professor Mark] Jones said. "They didn't expect it to happen...now they can't go backwards."
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