Two Republicans are pushing new legislation to protect access to in vitro fertilization (IVF) across the country just months after an Alabama Supreme Court ruling determined frozen embryos are legally people and made those who destroy them liable.  

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, joined with Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., to introduce the bill that would enshrine protections for the fertility procedure into law. 

“As Republican senators from Texas and Alabama, @SenKatieBritt and I are united on many issues, including the need to protect both life and access to IVF treatments, which many families rely on to have children,” Cruz wrote on X. 

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The GOP lawmakers penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Sunday afternoon, titled, “We’ll Protect Both Life and IVF.”

In February, an Alabama Supreme Court ruling made national headlines when it deemed frozen embryos are people and, thereby, allowed for parties to be held liable for their destruction. The ruling sent shock waves through the state’s fertility industry, which saw several clinics cease conducting IVF procedures, which can incur discarded or destroyed embryos. 

The state’s situation was quickly pointed to by Democrats as evidence of what might occur across the country if Republicans were in charge, likening IVF to the next target after abortion. 

“While the Alabama Legislature after the court’s decision promptly reiterated that IVF is protected, federal legislation would eliminate any ambiguity that might arise from future state-level judicial interpretations,” Cruz explained. 

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The Alabama court ruled embryos were considered people in February. (AP Photo/Kim Chandler)

As the senator referenced, Alabama promptly passed a bill granting immunity to doctors, clinics and health care staff that facilitate IVF procedures. 

The new bill would tie IVF legality to federal Medicaid funding, disallowing states from receiving the latter if they ban the practice. 

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IVF is a commonly used procedure to assist couples in becoming pregnant. (AP Photo/Sang Tan)

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., sought to have her own IVF protection bill considered again in the wake of the Alabama ruling, but it was blocked by her Republican colleagues. GOP senators were not in favor of the expansive nature of Duckworth’s measure, citing concerns over the broad authorization for the use of reproductive technologies and the lack of regulation. 

Duckworth did not provide comment to Fox News Digital. 

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Sen. Tammy Duckworth introduced a separate IVF bill. (Getty Images)

Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., chair of the Senate Pro-Life Caucus, objected to Duckworth’s most recent request for unanimous consent to consider her bill, saying at the time, “The bill before us today is a vast overreach that is full of poison pills that go way too far.”

Under Cruz and Britt’s bill, no facilities or states would be compelled to provide IVF services. Additionally, it would allow for states to administer certain health and safety standards for the procedure. 

“As a mom, I know firsthand that there is no greater blessing than our children, and IVF helps families across our nation experience the joyous miracle of life, grow, and thrive. This commonsense piece of legislation affirms both life and liberty — family and freedom, and I look forward to working with my colleagues to enact it into law,” Britt said in a statement. 

The Louisiana House and Senate became the latest state legislature to pass a bill aimed at transgender restroom policies, as it approved HB 608 on Friday and sent it to Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s desk.

The bill, dubbed the “Women’s Safety and Protection Act,” aimed to codify the meanings of “sex,” “male” and “female” in state law, while mandating what sponsors described as protection of women who may be targeted by biological males who elect to use female facilities, including restrooms, prisons and dormitories.

“The legislature finds and declares that physical differences between men and women, however, are enduring, the two sexes are not fungible; a community made up exclusively of one [sex] is different from a community composed of both,” an excerpt of the bill’s text read.

Proponents also wrote that the U.S. Supreme Court recognized through U.S. v. Virginia that there are inherent differences between men and women, and that they remain “cause for celebration, but not for denigration of the members of either sex.” The bill also cites the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

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While Landry’s office did not respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment, while serving as the state’s attorney general in 2016, Landry pushed back hard against then-President Obama’s scholastic bathroom-related Title IX interpretation.

“Let me be perfectly clear. President Obama and his appointees do not have legal authority to require our children to share locker rooms and bathrooms with children of the opposite sex,” Landry said at the time, WBRZ reported.

Before the bill hit the House floor in Baton Rouge in April, LGBTQ+ advocates criticized it as one of the most restrictive draft policies in the U.S., while claiming it could increase the vulnerability of the transgender community.

Around the same time, Louisiana’s top state education official instructed schools in the Pelican State to ignore Biden administration changes to federal Title IX protections on the gender identity front, according to The Hill.

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Louisiana Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley wrote in a letter to school officials that the federal adjustment conflicts with established state law instructing student-athletes to compete on teams determined by their biological sex.

Brumley and Landry launched a lawsuit against the Biden administration on that front in late April. 

During a press conference, Landry said he wished he could identify as legendary NBA center Shaquille O’Neal in order to try out for Louisiana State University’s basketball team but would be “laughed off the court,” according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

On April 11, the bill originally passed the State House 80-17 after being drafted by State Rep. Roger Wilder III of Denham Springs.

The likelihood of the bill becoming law illustrates the major shift felt in Louisiana as, in January, the Republican Landry succeeded former Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat who vetoed three related bills in 2023. 

Among the bills Bel Edwards had vetoed included a “pronoun restriction bill,” transgender surgery restrictions, and a version of a policy forwarded in Florida by Gov. Ron DeSantis that critics dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” legislation. 

Bel Edwards had been the only Democratic governor in the heavily-Republican Deep South, with the next closest geographically being North Carolina’s Roy Cooper.

In a veto message at the time, Bel Edwards called the trio of GOP-led bills harmful to “a very small minority, who happen to be comprised of the most vulnerable, fragile, children in our state.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Diana Cojocari, mother of missing North Carolina girl Madalina Cojocari, pleaded guilty Monday morning to one count of failure to report a missing child.

Madalina was last seen getting off a school bus in her hometown of Cornelius, just north of Charlotte, on Nov. 21, 2022, when she was 12 years old.

Public defenders changed Diana’s plea to guilty on Monday and said she is entitled to 521 days — or 17 months and four days — of credit upon any sentence of imprisonment, and she may be deported back to her home country of Moldova. Cojocari is currently in the U.S. on a green card. Fox News Digital has reached out to Diana’s attorneys and the Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s Office.

Diana and her husband, Christopher Palmiter — Madalina’s stepfather — did not report the 11-year-old girl missing to police until weeks later on Dec. 15, 2022, despite telling police the last time they saw their daughter was at home the evening of Nov. 23, 2022.

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Leads have taken authorities from the Charlotte area to the mountains of western North Carolina, but there have been no signs of the missing girl for nearly two years.

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Diana told school officials and Cornelius Police she hadn’t seen her daughter, a 6th-grader at Bailey Middle School who was born in Moldova, since she went to her bedroom the night of Nov. 23, 2022, around 10 p.m. after she and Palmiter got into an argument, court documents state.

In December, authorities arrested and charged the 11-year-old’s parents, Diana Cojocari and Christopher Palmiter, with failure to report a missing child to law enforcement after Madalina’s disappearance from her hometown in Cornelius, which is just north of Charlotte, around Nov. 23, 2022. (Mecklenburg County Detention Center)

Palmiter said that on Nov. 24, 2022, he drove to his relatives’ home in Michigan “to recover some items” after an argument with his wife. Diana apparently went into her daughter’s room around 11:30 a.m. that morning to discover the 11-year-old was gone, according to an affidavit.

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When Palmiter returned home to Cornelius on Nov. 26, Diana apparently asked him where their daughter was. Palmiter allegedly asked her the same question in return, the affidavit states.

Madalina Cojocari was last seen in Cornelius, North Carolina, on Nov. 21, 2022. (Google Maps/Charlotte FBI)

Soon after reporting Madalina missing last year, her parents penned a handwritten note expressing their concern for the missing 11-year-old, which the CPD shared with the public on Dec. 22. 

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Both parents were arrested for failing to report a missing child. Palmiter was released in August after posting bond while Diana remains in custody at the Mecklenburg County Jail.

Madalina Cojocari has been missing from Cornelius, North Carolina, for nearly two years. (Cornelius PD)

In an August interview with local news outlet WCNC, Rodica Cojocari, Madalina’s grandmother and the mother of Diana, said through a translator her “granddaughter is alive, but she’s been kidnapped.”

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Rodica, who hails from Moldova, proceeded to accuse Palmiter of trafficking Diana and Madalina for $5 million.

Investigators on Thursday shared a handwritten, personal message from the family of Madalina Cojocari. (FBI Charlotte/Cornelius Police Department)

Search warrants unsealed earlier this year suggest Diana and Rodica contacted a distant relative asking if he would help in “smuggling” Diana and Madalina from their Cornelius home, just north of Charlotte, before Madalina disappeared, according to phone records obtained by the Cornelius Police Department.

“She told him she was in a bad relationship with co-defendant Christopher Palmiter and wanted a divorce,” the warrant states.

Authorities are asking anyone with information about Madalina’s whereabouts to contact the CPD at 704-892-7773.