Due to a failed vote last week that would have ensured nationwide access to contraception, Democrats on Thursday are expected to force a vote to consecrate protections for in vitro fertilization — a fertility procedure that has helped millions of families have children — and expand access to the treatment for service members and veterans.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a military veteran who has used fertility treatment to have her two children, has championed the bill, called the Right to IVF Act. The bill would also expand access through insurance as well as for military members and veterans.
“These are real solutions that would help tens of thousands of Americans every year build the families of their dreams,” Duckworth, D-Ill., said this week.
Although most Republicans were expected to vote against advancing the measure, instead of offering their own, alternative legislation that would discourage states from passing outright bans on the treatment. Democrats in turn blocked it.
“Despite some claims from my colleagues on the other side, protecting IVF is not a show vote at all. It’s a show-us-who-you-are vote,” Schumer said. “This will be a chance for senators on both sides to show their support for strengthening treatments for people who start families.”
However, Democrats say Congress must protect access to fertility treatment after the Supreme Court in 2022 allowed states to ban abortions, and the Alabama Supreme Court in February ruled that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law. Several clinics in the state suspended IVF treatments until the state passed a law to provide legal protections for IVF clinics.
Senate Democrats said it showed how all types of reproductive care could be upended in many parts of the country after Roe v. Wade was overturned.
Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress have shown support for IVF, but have also largely refused to tell states how to regulate reproductive care. Instead, two Republicans, Sens. Katie Britt of Alabama and Ted Cruz of Texas have sought to quickly pass a bill that would threaten to withhold Medicaid funding for states where IVF is banned. Democrats blocked that bill on Wednesday.
Cruz, who is running for reelection in Texas, said it showed Democrats were making a “cynical political decision.”
“They don’t want to provide reassurance and comfort to millions of parents in America because instead, they want to spend millions of dollars running campaign ads suggesting the big, bad Republicans want to take away IVF,” he said in a speech on the Senate floor.
Democrats argued that the GOP bill was insufficient because it would still allow states to enact laws that grant embryos or fetuses the same rights as a person Abortion opponents in over a dozen states have advanced legislation based on the concept of fetal rights.
Sen. Patty Murray, the Washington Democrat who objected to quickly passing the GOP bill, dismissed it as “nothing but a PR stunt.”
