This is an opinion column.

Sen. Kaite Britt wants you to know she’s tough. That she’s for IVF. That she’ll protect IVF. And she’ll punish those who threaten IVF.

She’s just not very good at it — and were she ever successful, her tough talk could wind up hurting a lot of innocent people.

This week the Alabama senator joined with Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas to co-sponsor a bill ostensibly protecting in vitro fertilization from zealous states that might outlaw the fertility treatment.

States like — at least recently — her home, Alabama.

“The left is fearmongering, saying we are not going to protect IVF,” Britt told Fox News. Only it wasn’t Democrats who banned IVF in Alabama. It was members of her own party and the legislation they passed without considering what it would do.

And her new bill is about as well thought-out.

Britt’s legislation would punish such states — and here’s the kicker — by cutting off federal dollars for Medicaid.

No IVF? No federal money.

Like Britt’s embarrassing State of the Union rebuttal earlier this year, her bill sounds tough until you consider what such a thing might look like in real life.

And then it goes from tough to absolutely horrifying.

Imagine, for instance, the Alabama Supreme Court, which ruled eight-to-one against IVF already, came back with a new ruling. Let’s imagine this ruling said that the Alabama Legislature’s emergency patchwork un-banning of IVF — passed in a rush earlier this year — didn’t do the trick.

Suppose those justices told us a general bill can’t override the Alabama Constitution of 1901, which includes a “Sanctity of Life” amendment approved by voters in 2018.

This isn’t far-fetched, and the Alabama Supreme Court has shown already how nutty hypotheticals can become reality with the stroke of a pen.

What happens then?

No IVF. No federal money.

However, that money pays for things here. Things people need to survive. Things including childbirth.

Alabama is a poor state. Nearly half of all childbirths in Alabama are covered by Medicaid. What are those mothers to do then? What happens to their children?

Or the hospitals? Already, more than half of Alabama counties don’t have labor and delivery departments, and some in rural counties must drive as long as two hours to reach one.

“It’s pro-life, it’s pro-family, it’s pro-woman,” Britt told Fox News this week.

It’s also pro-giving-birth-in-the-back-of-a-car.

Punishing Medicaid recipients for the stupidity of elected officials is a bit like shooting pets for their owners’ cruelty, but Kristi Noem already called dibs on that.

Such a bill is so short-sighted and ill-conceived, it leaves us two possibilities: Either it was sponsored by stupid people, or its sponsors think we’re the stupid ones.

This bill was written for show. It’s less likely to become law than Alabama is to expand Medicaid. It’s phony. It’s fake.

Like a nail driven through sheetrock, it’s there for her to hang her hat on, and that’s all. It doesn’t need to be strong enough to support anything but getting a guest column in the Wall Street Journal.

If Britt wants to protect IVF in Alabama, there’s something she could do about that. Something that’s real.

She could direct some of her political power to replacing Alabama’s Supreme Court justices. She could cut campaign ads for candidates opposing the incumbent lawmakers who passed these laws in the first place. She could call out Gov. Kay Ivey for signing the state’s abortion ban into law.

But she’s not going to do any of those things.

Katie Britt’s toughness ends when it has consequences for her career.

Kyle Whitmire is the 2023 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. You can follow him on Threads here and subscribe to his weekly newsletter, Alabamafication.