Researcher ORCID Identifier

0009-0006-3621-2429

Graduation Year

2026

Date of Submission

12-2025

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Government

Reader 1

Andrew Sinclair

Rights Information

2025 Katharine C Bhatt

Abstract

This thesis examines how in vitro fertilization (IVF) emerged as an important issue on the U.S. political agenda in 2024 and 2025. Using John W. Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Framework, this paper analyzes how IVF shifted from a medical condition to a defined policy problem through new indicators, growing public relevance, and the focusing event of LePage v. Center for Reproductive Medicine. It then traces how decades of scientific development, professional regulation, and the work of policy entrepreneurs generated a set of feasible policy alternatives through what Kingdon calls the “long-softening up process”, before IVF became politically salient. Finally, it illustrates how the political stream is affected by a variety of characteristics including national mood, electoral incentives, partisan dynamics, and interest groups pressures, and highlights the political climate that arose that opened up a policy window to elevate IVF during the 2024 election cycle and the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term. The paper will also cover the limitations of Kingdon’s model in the case of IVF when applied to the contemporary U.S. political system. Institutional fragmentation, party disunity, and the strategic influence of specialized interest groups served as barriers to the policy outcomes during this period of alignment between the streams. Although IVF achieved agenda prominence and led to both state-level action and modest federal initiatives, the worry remains on whether these constraints will leave these policies to lack real impact. As a result, understanding IVF policy in the United States requires extending the Multiple Streams Framework to account for the structural features of American institutions that shape policy follow through after a problem rises on the agenda. Ultimately, this thesis argues that IVF’s trajectory in 2024 and 2025 reveals both the explanatory power of Kingdon’s framework and the persistent institutional barriers within a fragmented democratic system.

Download

This thesis is restricted to the Claremont Colleges current faculty, students, and staff.

Share

COinS