U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) forced a vote on Thursday on the so-called “Right to IVF [in vitro fertilization] Act” (S. 4445), sponsored by Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), which failed 48-47.

“It’s like an iceberg,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins declared on “Washington Watch” Wednesday. “They’re talking about the tip of this, to protect reproductive rights. It goes way beyond that, and you’ve got to look beneath the surface. They are misleading — I would be as bold to say that they’re lying — about what this really does.”

Conservative objections to the bill are not focused on IVF, but on everything else it would allow. “This is actually a very expansive bill. It’s over 60 pages long, and there’s a lot of mischief hung up in it in the name of protecting IVF,” assented Quena Gonzalez, senior director of Government Affairs at Family Research Council. “Every person, regardless of their circumstance of their conception, is inherently valuable and created in the image of God, and … the millions of children who have been born through IVF are precious and of inestimable value. But this bill goes far beyond that.”

“In the name of protecting IVF, this bill could legalize human cloning, gene editing and the creation of three parent embryos, the creation of animal-human hybrids called chimeras, commercial gestational surrogacy … [and] the buying, selling, and destruction of human embryos nationwide,” Gonzalez explained. The bill also poses a “danger to religious employers.” In other words, this bill “gives a green light to taking us into, quite frankly, a very scary place,” Perkins concluded.

Yet even these horrible consequences are not a comprehensive list, he added, because the bill “would leave open the door for more practices to be added, at the whim of the Secretary of Health and Human Services.”

This is not the first time Senate Democrats have attempted to undermine the sanctity of human life by threatening to smear Republicans as opponents of IVF. In February, Senate Democrats opportunistically maneuvered an opinion by the Alabama Supreme Court to try and ram through the so-called “Access to Family Building Act” (S. 3612), also sponsored by Duckworth. S. 4445 differs from S. 3612 by being much longer, but it serves the same purpose.

“It is destructive of human life,” Gonzalez complained. “The way this bill is worded, it would get rid of or push back against federal and state protections for human life.” Furthermore, “it ignores the fact that the best studies show that more than 90% of those embryonic children will never be born.”

This underscores “one of the problems that many pro-lifers have,” not with IVF per se, but with the unregulated way in which it is practiced, said Perkins. “There is an excess number of embryos often created in these fertilization clinics, typically. And what happens to them?” Pro-lifers are concerned to ensure that IVF does not lead to “the destruction of a human embryo” and that “they’re not used for other purposes.”

Under S. 4445, such life-preserving safeguards for IVF would “be beyond regulation,” Perkins declared. He compared the bill to “the Women’s Health Protection Act … that Nancy Pelosi pushed through the chamber back when she was Speaker,” in that it “would eliminate state pro-life laws.” Gonzalez agreed. “States could not step in … if this bill were to become law, and protect those embryos.”

At the most fundamental level, the Democrats’ messaging bill “is not about protecting the ability of men and women to conceive and have children,” lamented Perkins. Rather, said Gonzalez, “it plays upon the hopes and fears and dreams of parents who hope to become pregnant” to advance a completely unrelated agenda. Even the Associated Press recognized the bill as “an election-year push on reproductive care.”

Schumer set the tone on the Senate floor, asserting, “Not even IVF is safe in the aftermath of Roe. Today, women and families across America are rightfully worried that this basic service could be jeopardized, leaving them without an avenue to start a family.”

“I’m not sure what they’re protecting IVF from,” Gonzalez responded. “There’s no attack,” Perkins exclaimed. “There’s no effort to restrict this anywhere in the country. So, this is a solution in search of a problem.” Gonzalez agreed. “It’s a cynical political ploy to change the channel and change the topic in an election year.”

Gonzalez informed listeners that Family Research Council Action planned to score against a vote for S. 4445 and urged them to take action to “let their senators know that they want their senators to vote ‘no’ on this tomorrow.”