Conservative media figures are using homophobia and misogyny to attack surrogacy and IVF

Right-wing media figures are increasingly using homophobic and sexist rhetoric to shame LGBTQ couples, including some who work in right-wing media, and single women for using surrogacy and in vitro fertilization to have babies. Since Fox News’ Guy Benson announced his son’s birth via surrogate earlier this month, some conservative media figures have begun amplifying the attacks on fertility treatments that arose last year, attacking Benson and his husband’s use of surrogacy as “disturbing” and “an abomination.”

In the post-Roe era, right-wing figures have identified fertility treatments as a next major target

Since Roe v. Wade was overturned last summer, ending federal protections of the right to abortion, confusion has swirled about the legality and future of surrogacy arrangements and IVF treatments. Reproductive health advocates fear that conservative politicians will try to restrict either process by using so-called fetal personhood laws, which confer the legal rights and protections of personhood to embryos from conception. [New York University Law School, 9/27/22; The New York Times, 8/21/22] 

Conservative media figures have increasingly targeted IVF and surrogacy in the last year. Right-wing media have called surrogacy “morally horrific” and spoke out against IVF, largely in keeping with the conservative agenda’s rejection of LGBTQ families and single motherhood. [Media Matters, 6/26/23]