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SPARE A THOUGHT for Republican staffers who had to explain the female reproductive system to their bosses this week. Following a decision by Alabama’s Supreme Court, which led to the halting of fertility treatments in several clinics, some showed just how little they understood about baby-making. Tommy Tuberville, an Alabama senator, declared he was “all for” the ruling because “we need to have more kids”. In vitro fertilisation (IVF) in fact helps make more kids. Greg Abbott, Texas’s governor, wondered whether IVF created “one, ten, 100, 1,000” embryos (between zero and a dozen per cycle is common).
Patients in Alabama have become the latest collateral damage in America’s abortion wars. The ruling on February 16th found that embryos created by IVF and kept in “cryogenic nurseries” count as “extrauterine children”, and thus as people under state law. Politically this seems a gift to Democrats. Everything from the judgment’s scripture-heavy language, to jubilant pro-lifers declaring it a “tremendous victory for life”, and the fumbled responses by Republicans, helped paint Republicans as a radical, woman-hating party.
Democrats put the blame squarely on Donald Trump and his Supreme Court picks. “They came for abortion first. Now it’s IVF and next it’ll be birth control,” warned Hillary Clinton, a former secretary of state. Hastily the National Republican Senatorial Committee rushed out a memo instructing all Senate candidates to oppose any restrictions on IVF and “align with the public’s overwhelming support”. Several of them had previously co-sponsored bills—such as the Life At Conception Act—which, by in effect codifying embryos as people, could have had a similar impact on IVF .
Nearly two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, returning the issue of abortion to states, Republicans continue to struggle with the consequences of their victory. Conventional wisdom is that any talk about abortion is a win for Democrats. The immediate aftermath to Alabama’s ruling certainly suggests so. But it might not be quite that simple.
After an uncharacteristic pause, Mr Trump tried to end the fumbling and declared his resounding support for women, IVF and “Beautiful Babies”. “We want to make it easier for mothers and fathers to have babies, not harder!” he wrote on Truth Social, his social-media platform. This tone comes on the heels of his privately floating a federal abortion ban at 16 weeks (though states could go further). If that is Mr Trump’s position it would be a more moderate one than any Republican presidential nominee has held since the 1970s.
Since Roe was overturned, the total number of abortions in America has remained stable. But there has been a big shift in where they have been performed. A new report by the Society of Family Planning, a non-profit, estimated that the 14 states with strict abortion bans had 120,930 fewer abortions over the past 15 months than over a similar period before the end of Roe. American fertility doctors predict that a similar “regulatory migration” wave could follow for IVF patients if state courts start cracking down on fertility treatment. That is what has happened in Europe, where stricter embryo rules in countries like Germany and Italy helped make Spain the largest IVF market in Europe.
IVF may be the clearest example yet of pro-life buyer’s remorse. The vast majority of Americans support a procedure that has helped realise dreams for couples from the Obamas to the Pences. This is not a fight Republicans want. Yet it is one of several real-world questions that pro-lifers will now increasingly need to confront. The questions around fertility treatment are not just whether IVF is ok. They include whether embryos can be biopsied to check for abnormalities, how to deal with embryos left in freezers after death or divorce and what to do with surplus embryos. Republicans may be lining up to pledge their unconditional support to IVF, but none has (yet) confronted the corollary—the related destruction of embryos along the way.
And yet Democrats should not assume that the abortion debate can only win them votes. A 16-week ban is not as radical or unpopular as it may sound: 96% of abortions happen before 16 weeks and that cut-off would put America in line with many European countries (although with fewer medical exceptions after 16 weeks). Whereas a majority of Americans (69%) are in favour of abortion in the first trimester, this drops to a minority in the second trimester (37%) and the third (22%), according to Gallup. Americans are not that different from Europeans—more conservative but mostly in favour of some access to abortion.
The Democratic playbook is: remind voters that Republicans took away abortion and promise to bring back Roe. In swing states with potential ballot initiatives planned for election day, such as Arizona, this could just make the difference. The Democratic National Committee paid for dozens of billboards across swing states this week, tying Mr Trump to the loss of IVF and asking what could be next. However, Democrats need to tread more carefully than they may realise. On abortion at least, Joe Biden’s extreme wing has become bigger than Mr Trump’s. Whereas 24% of Republicans believe abortion should always be illegal, 44% of Democrats think it should be legal during the third trimester. That is out of step with both American and European public opinion. The “abortion positivity movement” on the left is also a uniquely American phenomenon.
Yet all of this posturing has little to do with actual policy. Mr Trump’s 16-week ban is as unlikely to materialise as Mr Biden’s promise to codify Roe, says Mary Ziegler, a legal historian at the University of California, Davis. More immediately, the Supreme Court cases to watch will be on the availability of the abortion drug mifepristone in March, followed in April by the question of whether the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labour Act protects pregnant women with health-endangering emergencies against state abortion bans. ■
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Andersen Ross Photography Inc | Digitalvision | Getty Images
Wall Street is warning that the U.S. Department of Education’s crack down on student loan repayments may take billions of dollars out of consumers’ pockets and hit low income Americans particularly hard.
The department has restarted collections on defaulted student loans under President Donald Trump this month. For first time in around five years, borrowers who haven’t kept up with their bills could see their wages taken or face other punishments.
Using a range of interest rates and lengths of repayment plans, JPMorgan estimated that disposable personal income could be collectively cut by between $3.1 billion and $8.5 billion every month due to collections, according to Murat Tasci, senior U.S. economist at the bank and a Cleveland Federal Reserve alum.
If that all surfaced in one quarter, collections on defaulted and seriously delinquent loans alone would slash between 0.7% and 1.8% from disposable personal income year-over-year, he said.
This policy change may strain consumers who are already stressed out by Trump’s tariff plan and high prices from years of runaway inflation. These factors can help explain why closely followed consumer sentiment data compiled by the University of Michigan has been hitting some of its lowest levels in its seven-decade history in the past two months.
“You have a number of these pressure points rising,” said Jeffrey Roach, chief economist at LPL Financial. “Perhaps in aggregate, it’s enough to quash some of these spending numbers.”
Bank of America said this push to collect could particularly weigh on groups that are on more precarious financial footing. “We believe resumption of student loan payments will have knock-on effects on broader consumer finances, most especially for the subprime consumer segment,” Bank of America analyst Mihir Bhatia wrote to clients.
Economic impact
Student loans account for just 9% of all outstanding consumer debt, according to Bank of America. But when excluding mortgages, that share shoots up to 30%.
Total outstanding student loan debt sat at $1.6 trillion at the end of March, an increase of half a trillion dollars in the last decade.
The New York Fed estimates that nearly one of every four borrowers required to make payments are currently behind. When the federal government began reporting loans as delinquent in the first quarter of this year, the share of debt holders in this boat jumped up to 8% from around 0.5% in the prior three-month period.
To be sure, delinquency is not the same thing as default. Delinquency refers to any loan with a past-due payment, while defaulting is more specific and tied to not making a delayed payment with a period of time set by the provider. The latter is considered more serious and carries consequences such as wage garnishment. If seriously delinquent borrowers also defaulted, JPMorgan projected that almost 25% of all student loans would be in the latter category.
JPMorgan’s Tasci pointed out that not all borrowers have wages or Social Security earnings to take, which can mitigate the firm’s total estimates. Some borrowers may resume payments with collections beginning, though Tasci noted that would likely also eat into discretionary spending.
Trump’s promise to reduce taxes on overtime and tips, if successful, could also help erase some effects of wage garnishment on poorer Americans.
Still, the expected hit to discretionary income is worrisome as Wall Street wonders if the economy can skirt a recession. Much hope has been placed on the ability of consumers to keep spending even if higher tariffs push product prices higher or if the labor market weakens.
LPL’s Roach sees this as less of an issue. He said the postpandemic economy has largely been propped up by high-income earners, who have done the bulk of the spending. This means the tide-change for student loan holders may not hurt the macroeconomic picture too much, he said.
“It’s hard to say if there’s a consensus view on this yet,” Roach said. “But I would say the student loan story is not as important as perhaps some of the other stories, just because those who hold student loans are not necessarily the drivers of the overall economy.”
A woman walks in an aisle of a Walmart supermarket in Houston, Texas, on May 15, 2025.
Ronaldo Schemidt | Afp | Getty Images
U.S. consumers are becoming increasingly worried that tariffs will lead to higher inflation, according to a University of Michigan survey released Friday.
The index of consumer sentiment dropped to 50.8, down from 52.2 in April, in the preliminary reading for May. That is the second-lowest reading on record, behind June 2022.
The outlook for price changes also moved in the wrong direction. Year-ahead inflation expectations rose to 7.3% from 6.5% last month, while long-term inflation expectations ticked up to 4.6% from 4.4%.
However, the majority of the survey was completed before the U.S. and China announced a 90-day pause on most tariffs between the two countries. The trade situation appears to be a key factor weighing on consumer sentiment.
“Tariffs were spontaneously mentioned by nearly three-quarters of consumers, up from almost 60% in April; uncertainty over trade policy continues to dominate consumers’ thinking about the economy,” Surveys of Consumers director Joanne Hsu said in the release.
Inflation expectations are closely watched by investors and policymakers. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has said the central bank wants to make sure long-term inflation expectations do not rise because of tariffs before resuming rate cuts.
A final consumer sentiment index for the month is slated to be released on May 30, and will likely be closely watched to see if the tariff pause led to an improvement in sentiment.
This is breaking news. Please refresh for updates.
Jamie Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., speaks during the 2025 National Retirement Summit in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, March 12, 2025.
Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Wall Street titan Jamie Dimon said Thursday that a recession is still a serious possibility for the United States, even after the recent rollback of tariffs on China.
“If there’s a recession, I don’t know how big it will be or how long it will last. Hopefully we’ll avoid it, but I wouldn’t take it off the table at this point,” the JPMorgan Chase CEO said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.
Specifically, Dimon said he would defer to his bank’s economists, who put recession odds at close to a toss-up. Michael Feroli, the firm’s chief U.S. economist, said in a note to clients on Tuesday that the recession outlook is “still elevated, but now below 50%.”
Dimon’s comments come less than a week after the U.S. and China announced that they were sharply reducing tariffs on one another for 90 days. The U.S. has also implemented a 90-day pause for many tariffs on other nations.
Thursday’s comments mark a change for Dimon, who said last month before the China truce that a recession was likely.
He also said there is still “uncertainty” on the tariff front but the pauses are a positive for the economy and market.
“I think the right thing to do is to back off some of that stuff and engage in conversation,” Dimon said.
However, even with the tariff pauses, the import taxes on goods entering the United States are now sharply higher than they were last year and could cause economic damage, according to Dimon.
“Even at this level, you see people holding back on investment and thinking through what they want to do,” Dimon said.
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