Over the course of his brief political career, Sen. Tommy Tuberville has struggled on a great many fronts. The Alabama Republican is perhaps best known for launching an unprecedented, 10-month blockade, preventing confirmation of U.S. military leaders, all the while failing to understand the implications of his own tactics, but that’s really just the start of a larger conversation.
As we recently discussed, Tuberville is also known for his election denialism, his provocative rhetoric about race, his disparagements of the U.S. military, his difficulties with basic details related to civics and modern American history, and his willingness to give Russia’s Vladimir Putin the benefit of the doubt.
Alas, the list keeps growing. NBC News reported on the coach-turned-politician struggling to share his thoughts on his state’s Supreme Court ruling that embryos must be seen as people.
“Yeah, I was all for it,” Tuberville told reporters at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday when asked about the Alabama Supreme Court’s Friday ruling that embryos created through in vitro fertilization are considered children under state law. “We need to have more kids. We need to have an opportunity to do that, and I thought this was the right thing to do,” Tuberville said.
When NBC News pressed further, asking about the implications of the ruling, most notably for families trying to have children through IVF, Tuberville said several words, though they weren’t altogether clarifying.
“Well, that’s, that’s for another conversation. I think the big thing is right now, you protect — you go back to the situation and try to work it out to where it’s best for everybody. I mean, that’s what — that’s what the whole abortion issue is about,” the GOP senator added.
Tuberville acknowledged that he hadn’t read the ruling, and as NBC News’ report added, the Alabaman “appeared to struggle to explain how the decision, which threatens to limit access to IVF treatment, would help more people have children.”
So, that interview could’ve gone better for the Republican. Perhaps he’d better explain his position in a different interview? HuffPost gave it a try.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said Thursday that he is “all for” the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision that frozen embryos are children. He also said he opposes the effects of the ruling. And that he supports fertility treatments like IVF that are now being denied to women across his state as a result of the court’s ruling. And that he wants to read the legislation more closely before saying more — except there is no legislation.
Semafor also talked to the senator and asked about the real-world effects the state Supreme Court’s decision was having on women who had begun to go IVF treatment in Alabama. “I don’t know enough about how that works,” Tuberville said after endorsing the court’s ruling.
Just so we’re all clear, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled seven days ago that frozen embryos are actual people. As a consequence, the University of Alabama at Birmingham suspended its IVF treatments on Wednesday, and two more medical facilities followed suit a day later.
For Tuberville, this isn’t an obscure dispute unfolding in a state thousands of miles from his home. At issue is an important ruling in his home state, affecting many of his own constituents, which the senator doesn’t seem to understand in a meaningful way.
Tuberville hadn’t exactly earned a reputation for competence before this week. His standing is nevertheless a bit worse now.