Indiana Right To Life Endorsement Highlights IN-GOV Candidates’ Extremism

Indiana Right To Life Endorsement Highlights IN-GOV Candidates’ Extremism

Republican candidates for governor including U.S. Senator Mike Braun, Lieutenant Governor Suzanne Crouch, and Eric Doden have been endorsed by a far-right extremist organization that not only advocates for stripping Indiana women of their constitutional freedoms, but has been openly hostile to the use of in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments.

Indiana Right To Life believes that life begins “from the moment of fertilization,” directly threatening the use of IVF, similar to the recent Alabama Supreme Court decision.

The organization also opposed exceptions for rape and incest – an extreme and unpopular position across party lines, but not among this field of candidates: Braun has consistently opposed allowing for exceptions for rape and incest. After casting the deciding vote to force rape victims to produce a notarized affidavit in order to seek an abortion or face criminal consequences, Lieutenant Governor Crouch presided over Republicans’ special session to pass the state’s near-total abortion ban.

Throughout his time in the U.S. Senate and as a state legislator, Braun also voted for and sponsored legislation to ban abortion nationwide, said he is “perfectly comfortable” with criminal penalties for doctors, spread misinformation about reproductive health care, and defund Planned Parenthood. In 2021, Braun “cosponsored the Life at Conception Act,” which recognizes a fertilized egg as a person, which, if enacted, could “severely restrict IVF treatments.” After the Alabama Supreme Court decision, Braun refused to commit to protecting access to IVF, claiming the issue should be “attended to on the state level.”

“With the future of reproductive freedom and access to fertility care at stake in this election, these endorsements are a clear warning to Indiana women and families,” said DGA States Press Secretary Emma O’Brien. “Whether Braun, Crouch, or Doden emerges from next month’s primary, each has committed to an extreme and unpopular agenda of further restricting reproductive freedom, giving rapists more rights than survivors, and threatening Hoosiers’ ability  to decide if and when to start a family. All of these candidates are too dangerous to be Indiana’s next governor.”

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