The IVF Ruling Is About Who Gets to Raise Your Children

When Republicans insist that life begins at conception, and also that seven cell clusters constitute “life,” what they are saying—what they were always saying—is that we as a society need babies so badly that somebody should always be entitled to take control and custody over somebody else’s baby, and indeed of every potential baby. Because, at the end of the day, your babies don’t belong to you; they belong, variously, to God, to the GOP, to the state, and to those who want to raise them in your stead. That isn’t just about controlling women, then, or about fertility and the power to make economic and health decisions about one’s own life. This is about the government endlessly making determinations about who is fit to take your children away from you and raise them as their own.