If former President Donald Trump is wrong about the ethical content of in vitro fertilization, at least he is consistent about what he aims to accomplish with the procedure. The same does not follow for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Since late August, Trump has openly supported IVF as a means of enhancing the Republican Party’s “pro-family” brand. This week, he called himself the “father of IVF,” saying, “We want fertilization, and it’s all the way.” It is sad to see Trump try to market the GOP as “the party for IVF,” but despite his disregard for the morality of the procedure and the irony of propping up IVF as a fertility booster, there is still a through line to his thinking. IVF is a simple, superficial, and strategic matter for Trump.
Harris, by contrast, is as or more pro-IVF and far less clear on the fertility aspect. For her, it is about individual, nontraditional freedom and desire. But take Harris and Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) at their word: They, too, intend to present their ticket as pro-family, pro-worker, pro-all the things that help them feign moderateness.
At the same time, Harris holds a close relationship with climate activism. Her “former” environmental policy positions are extreme, such as banning fracking and mandating electric vehicles, and the current Harris platform gives a primary bullet point to climate change, saying she will “unite Americans to tackle the climate crisis.”
Making climate change a central focus, however, is at odds with the pro-natalist persona she has offered to the public. For the climate movement in general, discouraging children is a real point of consideration and research. Harris campaign aide Camila Thorndike hesitates to have children over climate concerns. Meanwhile, Harris has given credence to the “climate anxiety” some college students wave as their newest mental struggle.
This attitude is in line with recent YouGov data revealing that a significant share of people think the birth rate is too high — an unexpected opinion to come out of a country with a continually declining birth rate. The people on this side of the fertility crisis are mostly young, liberal, and female. While certainly not all, it is likely that many of them are caught up in the climate concern all too familiar to Harris. The fledgling activist group Climate Defiance is a great example of these same agitated young people.
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But it is not only climate change that yields a contradictory fertility stance for the Democrats: Immigration is another big question mark. Harris has contributed to the collapse of border security, and one result is that parents cannot find the jobs that help them raise families and have more children. Likewise, abortion rates are an obvious shot against the birth rate.
Which is it for Harris, then, given her at-odds stances on fertility and climate change? The answer is that she has not chosen one. It is the Democratic standard to have contradictory rationales and non-positions, and Harris is the exemplary candidate.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
