Reproductive health was an election minefield for Republicans. It got worse with IVF.

Republicans up and down November’s ballot were always going to be on the back foot when it comes to access to abortion and other reproductive health issues.

Now they have to answer questions about in vitro fertilization and access to contraception as well.

A ruling this month by Alabama’s Supreme Court made clear just how treacherous those topics will be for Republicans.

Chief Justice Tom Parker declared that embryos frozen during the IVF process have the same legal protections as living children. A cluster of frozen cells accidentally destroyed in a lab, by Parker's reasoning, equals the wrongful death of a person out here in the world.

His ruling sounded more like a brimstone sermon than clear-eyed jurisprudence, with 40 mentions of God and eight references to the Bible's Book of Genesis.