In his attempt to win the GOP nomination, Newt Gingrich has had no problem discarding old positions and embracing a more conservative stance when it comes to government intervention in women’s fertility. To placate the right-wing base of the party, he’s even parroting the rhetoric of the radical personhood movement, which is pursuing legislation that would not only criminalize all abortion but outlaw common forms of birth control as well.

Now the supposedly “pro-life” candidate is backing another goal of the personhood movement — making it more difficult for couples to conceive through in vitro fertilization:

Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich called Sunday for a commission to study the ethical issues relating to in vitro fertilization clinics, where infertile women receive treatment to get pregnant and large numbers of embryos are created.

“If you have in vitro fertilization you are creating life. And therefore we should look seriously at what should the rules be for clinics that do that because they’re creating life,” said Gingrich, who opposes abortion and says life begins at conception.

Gingrich, who is campaigning for votes in Tuesday’s Florida primary, did not expand on his proposal for a commission. His remarks seemed to open the possibility of a larger federal role over IVF clinics across the country than currently exists.

As ThinkProgress previously reported, personhood legislation could ban couples from conceiving children through IVF, or at least drastically change how it’s practiced, making it less effective and more dangerous. Personhood USA — and now Gingrich too apparently — disapproves of IVF because the process involves discarding embryos.

Although IVF has long been an accepted practice for helping couples struggling with infertility to get pregnant, religious extremists have condemned it for allowing doctors to “play God.” Around 58,000 American IVF babies are born each year, comprising more than 1 percent of all births in the U.S.

A new Harris Interactive/HealthDay poll found that support for certain components of President Obama’s health reform law seems to be slowly increasing with time. According to the report, the percentage of Americans polled who are in support of the law’s provision preventing insurance companies from denying coverage to those with pre-existing conditions has jumped to 71 percent from just 64 percent at the end of 2010.

Other provisions of the ACA that are gaining acceptance since November 2010: creating insurance exchanges where people can shop for insurance is up to 59 percent from 51 percent; requiring research to measure the effectiveness of different treatments is now at 53 percent from 44 percent; and providing tax credits to small businesses to help pay for their employees’ insurance is now up 70 percent versus 60 percent.

– Fatima Najiy

The Romney campaign has issued a release highlighting Newt Gingrich’s support for a federal individual mandate, similar to the provision included in the Affordable Care Act. “THERE IS NO DENYING IT … GINGRICH ADVOCATED FOR THE OBAMACARE MANDATE,” the release says in capital letters and shows a picture depicting the former House Speaker as an “unreliable leader”:

But Romney himself had repeatedly called for a national responsibility requirement before launching his bid for the presidency and even flirted with maintaining the ACA’s provision as recently as April 2010.

Below is a table matching every quote the Romney campaign is touting as evidence of Gingrich’s support for the individual requirement with one of Romney’s own endorsements:

Verum Serum finds audio of Newt Gingrich touting the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate in a call with health care clients from May 2009. Relying on rhetoric that echoes Mitt Romney’s and President Obama’s defense of the provision, Gingrich explains, “We believe that there should be must carry, that is everyone is expected to have health insurance or if you’re an absolute libertarian we would allow you to post a bond, but we would not allow people to be free-riders, failing to insure themselves and then showing up at the emergency room with no means of payment.” “If you have must-carry then the insurance companies told us you can have must issue and you will therefore have a system in which you don’t have to have a system of cherry picking and maneuvering.” Listen:

Gingrich’s think tank — the Center for Health Transformation — serves approximately 94 health industry corporations and lobby groups, including health insurance (BlueCross BlueShield Association, WellPoint, AHIP, UnitedHealth), health IT (L-3 Enterprise, Microsoft, IBM), and pharmaceutical companies — with each paying up to $200,000 annually. The organization also advocates for a national individual mandate.

Newt Gingrich doubled down on his claims that the Obama administration is engaged in a “war against religion,” during a town hall in Florida this morning, and accused Mitt Romney of acting in the same “dictatorial” fashion while serving as governor of Massachusetts.

“The Obama administration is engaged in a war against religion,” Gingrich began. “Their decision last week that they would impose on every Catholic institution, every Jewish institution, every Protestant institution the Obamacare standard of what you have to buy as insurance is a direct violation of freedom of religion, an example of the dictatorial attitude of this administration,” he charged, ignoring the regulation’s religious exemption. He then went after Romney:

GINGRICH: Let me just note that in a similar circumstance, Governor Romney imposed activities on the Catholic hospitals against their opposition. Refused to allow them the right of conscience in Romneycare. Just as, by the way, he eliminated serving Kosher food to elderly Jewish residents under Medicaid.

Watch it:

In reality, Romney’s position on allowing religious institutions like Catholic hospitals to opt out of providing emergency contraception to rape victims is more complicated. In 2005, the governor vetoed a “widely supported bill” making the morning-after pill available over the counter and requiring hospitals to offer emergency contraception to rape victims, even after pledging to support such measures while running for governor. By September, the state legislature “easily overrode” his veto, but the Department of Public Health, which is overseen by Romney, began drafting regulations that exempted religious hospitals from the requirement.

Then suddenly, in December 2005, Romney “abruptly ordered his administration to reverse course… and require Catholic hospitals to provide emergency contraception medication to rape victims.” “My personal view in my heart of hearts is that people who are subject to rape should have the option of having emergency contraceptives or emergency contraceptive information,” he told the Boston Herald. Romney has since said that he would support broader federal conscience protections for health care workers and pledged to eliminate the Title X program which provides “reproductive health services like birth control” to millions of women.

Romney also angered the Jewish community in 2003 after he “nixed the funding of about $5 per day” that allocated additional dollars for “poor Jewish nursing-home residents to get kosher meals.” The governor warned that the subsidy would lead to an “increased rate for nursing facilities,” but the Massachusetts Legislature “approved an amendment to restore the $600,000 to finance the kosher meals.”

During an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) pledged to reintroduce his plan to privatize Medicare as part of the GOP’s budget plan in March. “I would simply say, there’s an emerging bipartisan consensus that we’re on the right track,” Ryan told host Chris Wallace. “And the point is, we should be offering solutions to our problems in our country. We shouldn’t just be demagoguing other people and offering no solution.”

Ryan would do well to follow his own advise, as the indignant House Budget Committee chairman grossly misrepresented the Affordable Care Act and the details of his own Medicare premium support solution. Below is a brief fact check:

CLAIM — MEDICARE WILL GO BANKRUPT: “The Congressional Budget Office also says Medicare is going bankrupt in 2021. The trustees at Medicare say that there’s $37 trillion unfunded liability.”

FACT: The CBO says that one part of Medicare — Part A or hospital insurance — will become “insolvent,” not bankrupt. Dedicated revenues will not be sufficient to pay all of its bills and the hospital fund will meet about 90 percent of its commitments, rather than the full 100 percent. In the succeeding years that shortfall will slowly widen and then contract, so that in 2085, Medicare could pay out 88 percent of its obligations, the program’s trustees conclude. The savings in the ACA — lowering annual payment updates to providers — has actually extended the life of the trust fund by nine years.

CLAIM — NOTHING CHANGES FOR CURRENT SENIORS: “If you take a look at our reforms, which don’t change any Medicare benefits for a person 55 or above, and says for people 54 and below, when they’ll retire, they’ll have a list of guaranteed coverage options over by Medicare just like we do it in Congress and federal employees have, and we’re not going to subsidize the wealthy as much as everybody else.”

FACT: It’s likely that beneficiaries 55 and older would see changes in their Medicare benefits. In 2022, newly-eligible seniors would have to enroll in a private plan, but existing beneficiaries (those who are over 55 today) would also have the option of leaving traditional Medicare. That opens up the possibilities of private plans trying to lure away the healthiest beneficiaries (as is currently the case in Medicare Advantage) and of health care providers abandoning traditional Medicare patients for the higher reimbursement rates of private insurers. For chronically ill seniors who are more likely to remain in fee-for-service Medicare this means two things: higher costs (as the healthier beneficiaries exit the risk pool) and fewer doctors. Ryan’s proposal also does not resemble the “coverage options” of federal employees, because his “premium support” payments do not keep up with health care costs. The FEHBP’s do.

CLAIM — ACA WILL RATION CARE: “Put that in comparison to the president’s health care law. This year, he appoints 15 unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats to a board called the IPAD, Independent Payment Advisory Board, and their job is to put price controls and therefore rationing on Medicare for current seniors. So, the president’s law takes half a trillion dollars out of Medicare to spend on Obamacare and now he’s putting this new rationing board in place, which will lead to denied care to current seniors.”

FACT: The 15 members of the IPAB are appointed by the President, but confirmed by the Senate. The group is tasked with making binding recommendations to reduce expenditures in the Medicare system, unless Congress acts to alter the proposal or discontinue automatic implementation. Significantly, their proposal to reduce spending cannot “include any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums…increase Medicare beneficiary cost- sharing (including deductibles, coinsurance, and co- payments), or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria” (Section 3403 (page 409) of the Affordable Care Act stipulates.)