An overwhelming majority of Americans said they believe in vitro fertilization treatment (IVF) should be legal, according to a new poll.
The poll, released Sunday by CBS News/YouGov, found 86 percent of Americans support keeping IVF legal for women, while 14 percent said they believe it should not be legal.
The survey was taken Wednesday through Friday, less than two weeks after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos and fertilized eggs are considered children under state law and subject to legislation related to the wrongful death of a minor. The decision stated Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act will now “apply to all unborn children, regardless of their location.”
The decision, while limited to Alabama, cast a national spotlight on IVF and how the ruling could usher in a new fight over reproductive rights across the country. The ruling did not outlaw IVF, though fertility experts have warned the new legal standards could make the process more expensive with limited accessibility.
The ruling was quickly lambasted by Democrats, while Republicans who oppose abortion but support IVF were put in a complicated position when explaining their views to voters.
A group of Senate Democrats late last month sought to affirm their support of IVF treatment and are now attempting to force a vote on a bill to protect access to the fertility treatment.
Alabama’s legislature last week passed bills giving IVF service providers civil and criminal immunity from prosecution or legal action related to the “goods and services” they provide, which Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) has signaled she will sign into law.
The CBS News/YouGov poll follows a separate survey from Axios/Ipsos, released late last month, that found about 66 percent of Americans said they disagree with the Alabama ruling, including 45 percent who said they strongly oppose it and 21 percent who somewhat oppose it.
That same poll found a partisan split in respondents’ familiarity with the ruling and, to a lesser extent, their feelings about it. About 65 percent of Democrats said they were familiar with the Alabama ruling, while about 42 percent of independents and 34 percent of Republicans said the same.
About 82 percent of Democrats opposed the ruling, while a smaller share of independents and Republicans — 67 percent and 49 percent, respectively — disagreed with it.
The CBS News/YouGov survey was conducted among a representative sample of 2,159 U.S. adult residents interviewed Wednesday through Friday. It has a margin of error of 2.8 percentage points.