Angry Republican hangs anti-IVF posters outside congressional office

Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MN) is exiting Congress this year after two terms in office and being told “no thanks” by the GOP’s Senate campaign arm when he considered running for the Senate.

But before he leaves Congress, he has apparently decided to complain about in vitro fertilization (IVF), a conception method used by many queer couples to have kids. Republicans have increasingly threatened to ban it because they see the discarding of fertilized embryos as murder.

Related:

House Republicans pass bill banning Pride flags & allowing anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination

Democrats condemned the bill’s riders as “cruel attacks.”

Rosendale’s latest screed takes the form of multiple signs posted outside his office in the Longworth building on Capitol Hill.

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Four posters detail Rosendale’s opposition to IVF. GOP opposition to IVF has become an issue Republicans in both houses of Congress and across the country are running from fast since majorities of Americans support open access to IVF.

While his Republican colleagues have rushed to safeguard IVF, which helps thousands of LGBTQ+ people and others start a family when they have no alternatives, Rosendale is an unrepentant opponent.

“IVF destroys more lives than Planned Parenthood,” screams one poster at passing Congressmembers and staff, citing the Catholic News Agency and conservative Witherspoon Institute to claim that 700,000 “frozen” and “experimented” fertilized embryos are destroyed annually.

One poster cites Planned Parenthood’s report of 392,715 abortions performed last year by the family planning organization.

“If you believe that life begins at conception as I do, there is no difference between an abortion and the destruction of an IVF embryo,” one poster quotes Rosendale as saying.

Another calls embryos used in IVF “conceived children.”

The posters went up Thursday morning, according to The Hill. Rosendale toned it down in a statement released as the posters went up.

“My heart aches for couples who are struggling to conceive a child, but I humbly ask all of my colleagues to educate themselves on the practice of IVF and ask themselves if IVF actually aligns with their pro-life values,” he said.

While others are doing there best to run from the issue, @RepRosendale is standing for truth in standing against the dangerous lie that IVF is safe or moral!

God bless him and may God grant more of our elected officials this kind of courage! pic.twitter.com/QQbvShlsJC

— Jesse Hughes ✝️🇺🇸 (@JesseHughesNC) June 27, 2024

Earlier this year, the Alabama Supreme Court outlawed the procedure in the state by granting personhood to embryos and making doctors complicit in murder if they employed the practice.

Alabama Chief Justice Tom Parker based the decision on the Bible and the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, leaving abortion access up to the states.

Another recent Rosendale rant went after the Veterans Administration for flying the Pride flag this June.

A letter to Department of Veterans Affairs chief Dennis McDonough in May described displaying the Pride flag at VA facilities as “woke identity politics” and complained that “flying this flag puts one group of veterans above the rest.”

“The VA should be worrying more about providing world-class care to our veterans and less about inundating them with propagandist gay flags,” said Rosendale in a press release.

He likened the Pride flag to “discriminatory virtue signaling.”

Attacking LGBTQ+ rights has been a big part of Rosendale’s short history in Congress.

Last year, he added an amendment to the annual National Defense Authorization Act in an attempt to ban gender-affirming care for veterans.

In defending that bill, he argued that trans people don’t know if “they are a man or a woman” and therefore are prone to launching “ICBM missiles” on everyone.

He also opposed drag shows on military bases.

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