WASHINGTON >> Less than two weeks after an Alabama Supreme Court decision upended in vitro fertilization in the state and prompted a national backlash, more than 100 conservative congressional staff members and IVF skeptics crammed into a meeting room a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol. They lined the walls and spilled into the hallway, straining to hear the advice of the 25-year-old woman who would help them figure out how to respond.

Some in the room that day harbored deep moral and ethical reservations about a procedure that involved discarding human embryos. But IVF was overwhelmingly popular, and many Republicans, including Donald Trump, were racing to denounce the Alabama ruling and embrace the procedure.

Emma Waters, then a senior research associate at the conservative Heritage Fo

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