GOP controversy: To a Young Republican club in Texas, IVF is ‘murder’? | Opinion
A breakaway Republican club with the confusing name Young Republicans of Texas held its state convention last week in Dallas.
It could not have turned out worse for Republicans.
This club is a deceptive new splinter group started by activists in the “America First” faction, not the genuine Texas Young Republican Federation. That under-40 Republicans’ club has been around in various forms for 90 years.
The new Young Republicans of Texas club has been around two years.
The name is misleading. Instead of upholding shared Republican values such as limited government, civic leadership, community service and economic success, the new club uses the name “Young Republican” like a fig leaf for a malcontents’ club started by today’s alt-right jacklegs.
Some are from the heavily male, aggressively nasty faction of young hardliners who consistently drive voters away with hostile or racist views.
Gathering for their first statewide meeting for the first time, about 100 members took a position completely at odds with more than two-thirds of Americans and Texans.
They called the miracle of in vitro fertilization abortion — and thus “murder.”
And called to ban IVF.
Liberty Hill-based Abolish Abortion Texas, the far-out group that wants women tried for felony murder if they end a pregnancy, immediately chimed in to agree.
“Embryonic children” are being discarded, the group wrote on the social platform X. They’re “in desperate need of protection.”
So law officers should raid clinics to rescue frozen embryos?
That doesn’t sound like a way for Republicans to win elections. Not even in Texas.
In a 2024 Texas Politics Project poll, only 16% of Texans wanted to ban IVF.
An outspoken 68% opposed a ban. That included 65% of Republicans.
Look, I’m not going to pretend that I know everything about when life begins. But I don’t think the Young Republicans of Texas know much, either.
Definitely not as much as they know about, say, Tucker Carlson’s latest Hitler-fan guest, or Fort Worth foghorn Bo French’s latest full-throated praise of Northern Europeans.
For example, the club’s resolution referred to how embryos get discarded after an IVF “procedure,” as if it’s a one-stop visit like pulling a tooth.
The original Texas Young Republican Federation responded sharply, calling itself a “big tent” club and accusing the new club of deception: “Their statements are not ours. Their endorsements are not ours.”
The Young Republicans of Texas definitely got the attention they crave.
The resolution drew more than 600,000 views on X.com and mostly hostile replies, plus more from Instagram and TikTok. Some were from Republicans.
A Colleyville Republican wrote, “As a lifelong Republican I can say this is not the hill to die on. Do something productive like abolishing property taxes.” Other replies were less civil.
The Young Republicans of Texas answered back on X that critics are “seething libs.”
State Rep. Mitch Little of Denton County, who represents far north Fort Worth, is not a seething lib.
In the Texas Legislature, he is considered one of the smartest lawmakers in the room, although in Austin that’s like being the fastest turtle.
Little wrote on X.com that he understands the spirit of the resolution, but it’s like opposing driving “on the grounds that some people use cars to intentionally run people over.”
Republicans can uphold IVF ethics, he wrote, without doing away with a “miraculous procedure” that grows families of Republicans and Christians.
IVF creates life. Banning it follows the shaky legal principle that embryos deserve equal rights.
It would be heartlessly cruel to parents in need, many of them Republicans and conservatives.
That’s why Republicans have rallied to support IVF in recent years. Republicans in Georgia and Tennessee passed laws upholding it. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Houston filed a campaign-season bill in 2024 to protect IVF, although the Heritage Foundation called the bill a political gesture.
Even President Donald Trump has called himself the “father of IVF” and the “fertilization president.” He struck an agreement last month to cut the cost of the needed fertility drugs.
So the Young Republicans of Texas are preaching a position somewhere to the far right of Donald Trump and two-thirds of Texas Republicans.
That will not help Republicans win.
This story was originally published November 28, 2025 at 4:34 AM.
