More than Half of GOP Voters Say ‘An Embryo is a Person with Rights'

A majority of Republicans voters and those who lean Republican say they agree with the statement: “Human life begins at conception, so an embryo is a person with rights.” 

A Pew Research Center survey released Monday showed 53 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaners say the above statement “extremely” or “very much” aligns with their personal views. Twenty-one percent say the statement aligns “somewhat,” while 25 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaners say “not too” or “not at all well.” 

The percentage of Republicans who believe an embryo is a person with rights is almost 20 points higher than the opinion of Americans overall. Roughly a third (35 percent) of Americans say they agree with the statement “human life begins at conception, so an embryo is a person with rights,” the survey found.

Conversely, Democrats are nearly half as likely as Americans overall to say embryos are people with rights. Eighteen percent of Democrats and Democrat-leaners say the statement is “extremely” or “very much” in line with their personal views, compared to 16 percent who say “somewhat” and 66 percent who say “not too” or “not at all well.”

The survey results come several months after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos created in in vitro fertilization (IVF) are considered unborn children under state law, and that anyone who destroys them may be held liable. IVF is a process in which “mature eggs are collected from ovaries and fertilized by sperm in a lab, [and] then a procedure is done to place one or more of the fertilized eggs, called embryos, in a uterus, which is where babies develop,” according to the Mayo Clinic.

Alabama lawmakers faced a massive pressure campaign from Republicans and Democrats following the ruling and in a highly consequential election year. Democrats, including President Joe Biden, have been using the decision as part of its pro-abortion and reproductive health campaign. Republicans, many of whom claim to believe life begins at conception, have been told to uncritically support IVF so as not to look “extreme” — despite the moral and ethical quandaries surrounding the process, including disposal, experimentation, long-term storage, eugenic-style embryo selection, and even selective abortions later on.

Former President Donald Trump has spoken in support of IVF, arguing that Republicans should “make it easier for mothers and families to have babies — not harder.”

The Alabama Legislature ultimately passed so-called “IVF fix” legislation providing civil and criminal immunity to IVF clinics for death or damage to embryos, after several IVF clinics in the state paused offering IVF in the wake of the ruling.

While the Pew Research survey shows that a majority of Republicans and a third of Americans believe embryos are people with rights, other polling following the Alabama ruling found wide-scale support for IVF and mixed support for applying personhood to embryos.

In February, an Axios/Ipsos poll found that two-thirds of Americans oppose considering frozen embryos to be people. By political affiliation, Republicans were evenly split between supporting and opposing, 49 percent to 49 percent. Independents and Democrats were less divided: 30 percent of independents supported considering frozen embryos to be people, as did 17 percent of Democrats, while 67 percent of independents and 82 percent of Democrats opposed.

A March CBS News/YouGov poll found that 86 percent of Americans support keeping IVF legal for women, while 14 percent said they believe it should not be legal.

The Pew Research Center survey was conducted with 8,709 respondents between April 8-14. The margin of sampling error is ±1.5 percentage points.

Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.