The Texas Fertility Center, where Kaylen Silverberg practices in vitro fertilization, or IVF, has been responsible for an average of four babies born in Austin every day, he said.
IVF is often an expensive, last-resort procedure to help people who struggle with infertility, or otherwise cannot have children naturally, become pregnant. The process usually involves sperm being injected into eggs, which become a small number of viable, roughly 100-cell early embryos.
Those can be tested for genetic abnormalities that lead to a miscarriage or fetus that cannot survive. Typically only one healthy embryo is then implanted into the uterus to avoid unwanted twins, triplets, or more, as was more common decades ago, Silverberg explained.
IVF is also frequently used in surrogacy, when couples have a third person carry a pregnancy for them when they often medically cannot. With IVF, it’s possible for the baby to have the intended parents’ genetics and not those of the surrogate or a donor.
But now, the Texas GOP, a party that often claims to have a pro-traditional family and anti-abortion backbone, has called for an end to both IVF and commercial surrogacy – even though Americans, including individuals opposed to abortion, overwhelmingly think IVF access is a good thing, according to a 2024 survey.
Last month, on June 11, the party opened their state convention with the release of their 2026-2028 platform – a list of priority issues Republicans plan to ask state legislators to consider during the next legislative session.
“We call on lawmakers to affirm the sanctity of every human life, created in the image of God,” the platform reads, defining life as beginning at “the moment of fertilization.”
If life begins at fertilization, the Texas GOP then condemns IVF and surrogacy, which can result in the freezing, storage, or discardment of the unused early embryos, depending on the wishes of the parents. “Protect fetal life from destructive practices, such as IVF and commercial surrogacy,” the platform demands.
“There are other people out there who are worried that we’re discarding a lot of embryos – absolutely true,” Silverberg said. “Nature discards 85% of embryos. So, if anything, IVF is a procedure that reduces embryo destruction compared to nature. But you can’t prosecute nature.”
Silverberg argued that the notion that IVF is a way to “genetically design” babies or abort fetal life is fiction. Discarding unused early embryos created in a petri dish, which have never been in a uterus, doesn’t violate Texas’ near-total abortion ban, he explained.
Silverberg also clarified that the embryos the Texas Fertility Center discards are chromosomally abnormal and incompatible with life, and that is common practice for IVF providers.
“We do not discard embryos that have Down syndrome. We don’t discard embryos that have sickle cell [disease]. We don’t discard embryos with Tay-Sachs [disease], or spinal muscular atrophy, or cystic fibrosis,” he said, adding that ultimately, whether the embryos are stored or discarded is the choice of the couple they belong to.
The Texas GOP platform’s shift on IVF comes between a larger, increasingly contentious split within the party on the issues of IVF and surrogacy.
Back in 2024, Gov. Greg Abbott and Donald Trump affirmed their support of IVF when the Alabama Supreme Court ruled IVF-created embryos can be considered children, leading state officials to quickly backpedal. But two weeks after the Texas GOP platform release, Senate candidate Ken Paxton told the Washington Examiner, “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.”
“You can’t say, ‘Hey, I’m pro-family,’ but I’m opposed to IVF.”
Kaylen Silverberg of Texas Fertility Center
John Seago, president of Texas Right to Life, says the anti-abortion group is opposed to the discarding of even early embryos during the IVF and surrogacy process. “The industry standard involves destroying multiple human embryos, and those are human beings that deserve our moral attention and protection,” Seago told the Chronicle.
Silverberg argued that there’s nobody more “pro-life” than a fertility specialist, who makes having children possible through IVF every day. “I don’t mean pro-life from a political standpoint. I mean pro-life from a scientific standpoint,” he said. “You can’t say, ‘Hey, I’m pro-family,’ but I’m opposed to IVF.”
Surrogacy Questioned
On July 8, the Texas Senate Committee on Health and Human Services examined the GOP platform’s claim that foreign families are using American surrogates to produce U.S. citizen children, suggesting that surrogacy takes advantage of birthright citizenship as a way to circumvent the U.S. immigration system.
Legislators heard testimony from surrogates sharing both negative and positive experiences, parents who have had children through IVF and surrogacy, reproductive lawyers, and Texas Right to Life representatives, among others.
Republican Sen. Lois Kolkhorst also expressed concern that surrogacy agencies and their contractual agreements with surrogates fall under limited regulation in Texas.
Lori Anderson, an Austin-based attorney specializing in surrogacy and reproductive law, said most parents that pursue surrogacy have “exhausted every other option.”
“Some are cancer survivors who lost their fertility before they had a chance to become parents. Others endured years of infertility and heartbreaking miscarriages,” Anderson said. “These are not people looking for convenience.”
She pressed that her international clients are not seeking to exploit the immigration system. “I don’t think, from my experience, that this is an actual danger of something that’s happening and needs to be restricted,” she told lawmakers.
“Without exception, all of my international parent clients returned immediately to their home countries with their newborn, excited to share that joy with their extended families,” Anderson continued. “Surrogacy tourism is not a fair term.”
She added that the Senate could consider new regulation that would benefit the surrogacy process in Texas – such as a framework for courts to decide whether or not to validate a gestational agreement, or require that surrogates have legal representation.
“I’m not saying that guidance doesn’t need to be there – it does,” Anderson said. “But I don’t want to essentially throw the baby out with the bathwater.”
Brianne Weber, a mother from Lakeway, asked lawmakers to carefully consider any regulation of surrogacy and IVF that arises during the coming legislative session.
“Please don’t regulate surrogacy or IVF in a way that blocks people from building their families the way that we do,” Weber said. “The vast majority of surrogate journeys are just like ours. They’re beautiful, voluntary sacrifices that create a lifelong bond.”
This article appears in July 17 • 2026.
