Alabama special election to test political potency of abortion, IVF

A special election in an unusual purple Alabama state House district is testing the political potency of reproductive rights in a red state after a major ruling there last month led to a temporary pause on in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment. 

Republican Teddy Powell is running against Democrat Marilyn Lands in a special election for Huntsville-area state House District 10. Powell has leaned into issues including the economy and infrastructure, while Lands has placed an emphasis on IVF and abortion, including sharing a personal story of the abortion she received.

The race could offer one of the first clues about how salient the issues of IVF and abortion coming on heels of the state Supreme Court’s decision.

“I think in this race, in this district, at this time, it’s the right issue for the right day, and IVF is absolutely going to be an issue,” said Republican strategist Jon Gray, while arguing abortion and IVF were separate issues.  

Lands and Powell are running for an open seat in state House District 10, which was vacated after former Rep. David Cole (R) pleaded guilty last year to voter fraud.  

Lands is a licensed professional counselor who’s also worked in Republican politics as a former campaign manager for former Republican state House Rep. Mike Ball. Powell is a Madison City Council member and previously served as a budget analyst for the Defense Department.  

The district, which encompasses portions of Huntsville and Madison in northern Alabama, according to AL.com, is an unusual one in the Yellowhammer State, because it’s one of the few swing seats.  

The greater area is home to the NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, and the district is situated in southwestern Madison County, one of the fastest growing counties in the state.

Powell said he wants to focus on modeling the work done in northern Alabama and applying it to the rest of the state.

“What we’ve done here is, there are particular roads that needed to be done, and … as we did those roads and brought that infrastructure, then it brought businesses. As those businesses come in, you know, what would happen from there is we increase our tax base,” Powell told The Hill. 

Meanwhile, Lands has made abortion and IVF key issues in the race. She released an ad earlier this year sharing the story of her abortion two decades ago and the story of another woman, Alyssa, who had to cross state lines to receive access to the medical procedure in 2022 after her learning her child had been diagnosed with Trisomy 18, underscoring how the overturning of Roe v. Wade has changed access to abortion across generations.

Alabama’s current abortion law, which essentially bans the procedure with very limited exceptions, went into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in 2022.

Even more recently, the state witnessed a seismic shift around access to IVF treatment, when the Alabama Supreme Court ruled last month that frozen embryos were considered children. The ruling stemmed from a legal challenge filed by several couples after a patient dropped and destroyed several frozen embryos in a fertility clinic.

Lawmakers quickly passed legislation that addressed civil or criminal liability concerns for IVF providers, with several health care providers beginning to resume access to the treatment.

But the ruling has opened the door to questions around defining when life begins — and how the ruling could shape reproductive access in the state and influence it elsewhere. It also raises questions about how those kinds of definitions might square with existing abortion laws in the books.

“When the Dobbs decision came down, many people couldn’t have imagined a world where IVF would’ve gotten wrapped up in it,” said Heather Williams, president for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), which has endorsed Lands.  

“I think the story here is not just about IVF as an issue and the importance of giving people as many options as we can to choose how and if they can grow their family,” Williams said, “but also that Republicans are not governing around policy issues that they actually believe in. They’re governing around power and control and being able to make decisions on our behalf.”

Lands has heard concerns around IVF access and how it could have unintended economic consequences for the area.

“I’ve also heard from people in business and industry who are concerned because … Huntsville’s become a big hub for job growth,” Lands told The Hill. “And there are families that were planning to move here who now are reconsidering that. So from an economic development standpoint, it’s having an effect there, too.”

The race has attracted national attention as the special election offers one of the first data points of how the state Supreme Court’s IVF ruling and the state Legislature’s recently passed legislation is being received among some voters in Alabama.  

Former Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.), who campaigned for Lands over the weekend, told The Hill in an interview that he believes IVF and abortion will play an “important role” in the race, but that “it is one of many.” 

“This state is never going to progress as a whole until Democrats can become competitive across the board. To do that, we got to break the supermajority that’s in the Legislature. [Lands has] got a chance of winning and helping us work toward that goal,” he said.  

Some Republicans have acknowledged that IVF will play a role in the race, but bristle against the way Democrats have been coupling abortion and IVF together.

“I believe not just as a political consultant, that as a woman, that the issues of IVF and abortion are completely unrelated,” said Republican strategist Angi Horn, who said she’s faced fertility struggles herself.

“IVF is about individuals who are unable to — through other avenues — have children, and IVF is a way for them to conceive. Abortion is quite the opposite,” she said.

Republicans also argue that the state Supreme Court’s case has been misunderstood and politicized.

That’s “something that the mainstream media for the large part has forgotten — Democrats have absolutely forgotten — and trying to turn it and twist it into something that’s anti-in vitro fertilization. It’s quite the opposite,” Alabama GOP Chair John Wahl told The Hill. 

For all of the national attention that this single state House election has received, Gray, the Republican strategist, emphasized that this seat was unlike that of many others in the state. 

The state House race will do little immediately to change Republican dominance in the state Legislature, much less Alabama’s red trifecta. State legislative races, particularly when scheduled during off-cycle dates, also tend to see lower voter turnout. 

But that hasn’t stopped Jones — or other Democrats for that matter — from spotlighting the race. The former Alabama senator pushed back against the idea that the issues of IVF and abortion were being unfairly conflated together and argued that Republicans wouldn’t stop at those issues in the battle over reproductive rights.

“Yes — IVF is connected to abortion, which is also connected to contraception,” Jones said. “And if you look at what’s going on in the far-right ‘Right to Life’ movement, that’s exactly what they’re coming after.”