Paxton Backpedals On IVF, Now Says There Should Be “Restrictions”

Washington Examiner: “Paxton adopted a less absolute position… ‘We need to have restrictions.’”

AUSTIN, TX — As Texas Republicans’ extreme IVF ban proposal continues to spark fierce divisions in the party, Ken Paxton is backtracking his previous statements supporting IVF, now saying “we need to have restrictions.” 

While at the conservative Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Conference in Washington, D.C., Paxton told the Washington Examiner he “would not commit” to supporting a bill for national protections for IVF in Congress despite his earlier statements, saying “we need to look more into [IVF].”

REMINDER: Paxton himself voted for Texas’s legislation affording legal rights to fetuses in criminal cases that is still in effect today, a law that “identif[ies] an ‘unborn child at every state of gestation from fertilization until birth’” and could be interpreted to ban IVF. Texas’ extreme abortion ban, which Paxton enforced, discouraged Texas women from seeking IVF treatment to start their families and endangered Texas women’s ability to have children.

Read for yourself on Paxton’s latest flip flop on IVF:

Washington Examiner: Paxton says ‘we need to look more into’ in vitro fertilization

June 27, 2026

By Max Grinstein

• Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the GOP’s Senate nominee in the Lone Star State, said that “we need to look more into” in vitro fertilization as the procedure becomes a growing point of contention in the pro-life movement.

• Paxton’s comments come two weeks after delegates at the Texas Republican Party’s biennial convention in Houston called for an end to such procedures, which they argue in their platform “destroy embryonic life.” Paxton publicly broke with his party at the time, telling the Texas Tribune that he is a “strong supporter of IVF and pro-family policies.”

• Yet Paxton adopted a less absolute position in a Saturday interview on the sidelines of the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Conference in Washington, D.C.

• “We need to have restrictions, so that we don’t lose fertilized eggs, if that’s possible, and we need to just examine the issue,” Paxton told the Washington Examiner.

• Paxton said that he wants to look into the “ethics and the morality of doing certain things” as “science and technology move forward.”

• Paxton would not commit to whether or not he would support a hypothetical bill establishing national protections for IVF in Congress.

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