And any movement against human embryonic research may end up also targeting IVF, as it also involves discarding excess healthy embryos. Louisiana shows how this might play out. There the destruction of viable embryos is prohibited, meaning that unused frozen embryos must be stored indefinitely. When Hurricane Katrina struck the state in 2005, about 1,200 frozen embryos were rescued from a flooded hospital in eastern New Orleans. Hank Greely, a bioethicist at Stanford University, says that other states may introduce legislation targeting ex vivo embryos—the term used to describe embryos outside the human body.

“Ex vivo embryos for direct reproduction are probably going to be politically safe, but ex vivo embryos for research I think are going to be more vulnerable. Probably to state legislation, maybe to increased federal legislation,” says Greely.

However, one factor that might make such legislation less likely is that IVF and associated research hasn’t been a core focus of the pro-life movement. “Most of the pro-life movement cares about babies, or fetuses that look like babies,” Greely says. An embryo used in embryonic research is usually discarded within 14 days of fertilization, while it is still a ball of cells and before it has started the earliest stages of developing a brain, spinal cord, or heart. When thinking about where antiabortion activists have focused their attention, it might also be no coincidence that abortion restrictions disproportionately affect poorer people and Black people while wealthier people have much easier access to IVF.

And there is another problem facing embryonic research, Greely says. In the early 2000s, human embryonic stem cells (HESCs) were a hoped-for source of treatments for many diseases, including diabetes. Although research is still ongoing, there is still no major treatment derived from HESCs on the horizon. Outside of scientific organizations and certain groups focused on specific diseases, there might not be many people fighting to keep human embryonic research.