WASHINGTON Senate Republicans are struggling to respond to an extreme Alabama Supreme Court ruling effectively halting in vitro fertilization in the state as Democrats plan a new effort this week to protect access to IVF and other fertility treatments nationwide.

On the one hand, Republicans maintain that they support the continued use of IVF, calling it both pro-family and pro-life. But on the other hand, many in the GOP agree with the central premise of the ruling that found that frozen embryos are children with equal rights, a contradictory position that now has them on the defensive on an issue that is supported by over 80% of Americans, including a majority of Republicans.

Thats really at the crux of the ethics of it, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) told reporters on Tuesday. How do our laws recognize the dignity of human life but also understand that the procedure that it enables is a life-creating procedure?

No one has IVF to destroy life, they have IVF to create life, he added. Unfortunately, you have to create multiple embryos, and some of those are not used, then youre now in a quandary.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said she supported access to IVF. When asked if she considered frozen embryos children, she said, I dont want to say theyre not children.

The Alabama Supreme Court released a decision earlier this month that grants embryos the same legal rights as children. The ruling set IVF patients and providers in the state into a tailspin , with three of the largest fertility clinics announcing that they paused IVF services to avoid legal risk in the wake of the decision.

The decision centered on a 2020 lawsuit in which three couples sued an Alabama fertility clinic for the wrongful death of their frozen embryos, using a civil law dating back to 1872 that allows parents to sue over the death of a child. A circuit court judge had dismissed the lawsuit in the wrongful death suit, ruling that the statute did not apply to frozen embryos, but the Alabama Supreme Court reversed that decision. A majority of the justices ruled in favor of defining embryos as children under the wrongful death statute.

Democrats have been connecting the dots between abortion bans and how they could impact fertility treatment for years. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), who had both of her children using IVF, last month introduced the Access to Family Building Act which would create a federal right to IVF and ensure that anyone can access such care without reprisal from their home state.

Duckworth said in a Tuesday press conference that she plans to call for unanimous consent to pass her bill on the Senate floor on Wednesday.

If Republicans truly care about the sanctity of families, then they need to show it by not blocking this bill when I bring it to the floor tomorrow, Duckworth said at the press conference.