Why do Republicans want to track IVF babies' genetic fitness?

"Big Brother is Watching You"

Feb 25, 2025

Vast data collection is a fast-growing tactic of the movement against reproductive rights. For example, anti-reproductive-rights groups and lawmakers “are increasingly relying on dubious studies and data collection to ‘prove’ that abortion is dangerous despite all evidence to the contrary.”1 These same anti-reproductive-rights activitsts are now working to extend this Big Data tactic into the fields of maternal health and infertility care.

In Arkansas, for example, anti-reproductive-rights Republican lawmakers have introduce the “Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Reporting Act” (HB 1554). The ART data that te bill would require the state to collect is extensive, and would no doubt be used by anti-SRHR groups, activists, and lawmakers to launch future attacks against ART, like in vitro fertilization (IVF).

But that’s not the worst part of this bill…

What is the worst part of this bill?— The eugenic undertones and goverment serveillance of every assisted reproductive technology patient and their children - through 18 years of age.

Under “Maternal and neonatal health outcomes,” the bill states (emphasis added):

In conjunction with the Department of Human Services, the Maternal Mortality Review Committee, and the Maternal and Perinatal Outcomes Quality Review Committee, the Department of Health shall track and report:
(1) Maternal health outcomes throughout pregnancy, labor, and the postpartum period consisting of a minimum of eighteen (18) months after the end of a pregnancy for women who conceive, or bear through gestational surrogacy, children with assisted reproductive technology; and
(2) Neonatal health outcomes, including birth defects, diseases, genetic or physical conditions, chronic issues, physical abnormalities, mental health, or other health factors, of children conceived with assisted reproductive technology, including an implementation of an ongoing review of a child’s genetic, physical, and emotional health until eighteen (18) years of age.

First of all, this is a Big Brother bill. The term "Big Brother” comes from the character in George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, and it “has become a synecdoche for abuse of government power, "particularly in respect to civil liberties, often specifically related to mass surveillance and a lack of choice in society” (emphasis added).2 In the novel, the slogan Big Brother Is Watching You “appears on posters of Big Brother throughout the novel. The phrase is a threat that is meant to keep people in line: it reminds them that they are always under surveillance” (emphasis added).3

As researchers have observed, “a symbiotic relationship exists between surveillance and social control, which are used as policy mechanisms in [anti-reproductive-rights] legislation.”4 In fact, surveillance and social control are “mechanisms the state uses to mediate access to certain forms of reproductive care,” such as ART.5

“Surveillance practices are connected to interpersonal monitoring and institutional practices,” and “social control can be traced to specific, often punitive policies enshrined in the criminal justice and legal systems.”6 It’s important to remember that, “once new surveillance and social control mechanisms are established in policy, a precedent becomes established that ‘feeds forward’ into enacting more invasive policies.”7

Second, the “Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Reporting Act” has eugenic undertones. The monitoring of the genetic fitness of children who were conceived through the use of ART, all the way up to 18 years of age, evokes memories of the eugenic ‘Better Babies’ Contests of the Twentieth Century often held at state fairs, wherein children would be “sized up and given a grade based on a litany of bodily measurements, each carefully scrutinized by a room of experts—just like the cattle, pigs or sheep in the next building over.”8

“These human contests started out by focusing on babies and young children, but soon entire families would also be judged at fairs for their lineage and cumulative flawlessness,” and from their inception, these contents “lent popular exposure to the study of eugenics.”9

Many anti-reproductive-rights activists are already prone to spreading misinformation about the physical or genetic flaws of children who were conceived through the use of ART. That the sponsors of this bill are both anti-choicers suggests that the collection of data on this particular group of children may be motivated by perceived “defects” in these children.

Under Christian Nationalist pronatalism, a woman is supposed to be a baby-making factory. If she “fails,” then there must be something spiritually and inherently bad or wrong about her. Hence, she must be serveiled.

And her babies she conceives through ART? There must be something wrong with them, too. Hence, they also must be surveiled.— The “Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Reporting Act” comes across as a fishing expedition by ART opponents - who believe ART babies are bad in some way - to find “evidence” of these children's “defectiveness.”

“As state legislatures continue to propose and enact [anti-reproductive-rights] policies, it is critical to contextualize and interrogate the larger landscape of surveillance and social control practices within which these laws exist.”10 The “Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Reporting Act” is an anti-reproductive-rights, Big Brother bill with eugenic tinges. It is “foregrounded in social constructions of target populations that marginalize those who are not considered normative members of society. If policy legitimates the surveillance of one group, then the same frames can be applied across other populations and with new levels of invasiveness.”11

*The bill is sponsored by Representative Alyssa Brown and Senator Jim Dotson.

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