WASHINGTON – Senate Republicans blocked legislation This would make it a national right for women to access in vitro fertilization and other fertility treatments after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer forced a vote on the issue Thursday in an effort to generate a contrast in election year in reproductive care.
Senator Tammy Duckworth, a military veteran who used fertility treatment having her two children, defended the bill, called the Law on the Right to IVF. The bill would also have expanded access through insurance, as well as for military personnel and veterans.
“As a mother who has struggled with infertility for years, as a mother who needed IVF to have my two beautiful daughters, all I can say to my Republican colleagues at this moment is, ‘How dare you,’” Duckworth, D-Ill., said after the vote.
All Republicans except Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine voted against advancing the measure, ensuring it received just 48 votes — well short of the 60 votes needed. Instead, GOP senators offered their own alternative legislation that would discourage states from enacting explicit bans on the treatment. Democrats, in turn, blocked it on Wednesday.
The overtly political back-and-forth, with no attempt to find a legislative compromise, showed how quickly Congress shifted to a campaign mentality five months before the fall elections.
As Schumer seeks to protect a narrow Senate majority and boost Democrats’ hopes of occupying the White House, he has sought to highlight Republican intransigence toward federal legislation that would guarantee women’s rights to reproductive care. Democrats have campaigned heavily on the issue since the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended the federal right to abortion.
“The anti-abortion movement is not over yet. Now that Roe is gone, they are focused on a new goal — in vitro fertilization,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Thursday.
Schumer, a New York Democrat, also held a vote last week on legislation to protect access to contraception, but Republicans blocked it, arguing it was nothing more than a political stunt. Republicans have also blocked previous attempts to quickly pass IVF protections. They emphasized that they support in vitro fertilization and said Schumer was once again joining the campaign with Thursday’s vote.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana, said Democrats were trying to “politicize a deeply personal issue for short-term political gain.” He added that Schumer brought the bill to the floor without allowing for the committee work and studies that usually characterize serious legislation.
Still, Schumer said she would continue to introduce legislation on reproductive care.
“Republicans are contorting themselves trying to get away from their own record on reproductive freedom,” he said at a news conference after the vote.
Democrats took to the Senate floor on Thursday to give a series of speeches that highlighted personal stories of how people were able to have children through in vitro fertilization. They say Congress must protect access to fertility treatment after the Supreme Court in 2022 allowed states to ban abortion and The Alabama Supreme Court ruled in February that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law. Several clinics in the state have suspended IVF treatments until the state enacted a law to provide legal protections for IVF clinics.
“After the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that a frozen embryo is the same, has exactly the same rights as a living, breathing person, women who waited months and spent tens of thousands of dollars and were days away from a doctor’s appointment IVF were left to I wonder if it was all for nothing when the treatment was abruptly canceled,” said Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington.
Most Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, have voiced support for in vitro fertilization but also largely refused to tell states how to regulate reproductive care. Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, met with lawmakers on Thursday and told them that rules on abortion should be left up to the states. He also said he supports exceptions for rape, incest and saving the life of the mother, according to Republicans at the meetings.
Republicans are seeking to find an answer to voters’ concerns about access to abortion and reproductive care – an issue that is expected to feature heavily in the November elections. Following the Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday that preserved access to the abortion pill mifepristoneanti-abortion groups expressed dismay while most Republicans remained quiet.
This week in the Senate, Republicans highlighted their efforts to expand access to fertility treatments, but stopped short of endorsing the Democratic plan.
Sen. Rick Scott, a Republican from Florida, said in a speech this week that his daughter was currently receiving in vitro fertilization treatment and spoke of a proposal to expand the flexibility of health savings accounts. Two other GOP Republicans, Sens. Katie Britt of Alabama and Ted Cruz of Texas, also tried to quickly pass a bill that would threaten to withhold Medicaid funding for states where in vitro fertilization 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 safety and comfort to millions of parents in America because instead they want to spend millions of dollars running campaign ads suggesting that big, bad Republicans want to end in vitro fertilization,” he said in a speech on the Senate Plenary.
Democrats argued that the GOP bill was insufficient because it would still allow states to enact laws that give embryos or fetuses the same rights as a person. Opponents of abortion in more than a dozen states have advanced legislation based on the concept of fetal rights.
Murray, who opposed quick passage of the GOP bill, said the bill was flawed because it “does not say whether parents should be allowed to have clinics discard unused embryos — something that is a common and necessary part of in vitro fertilization process.”
But Republicans also criticized the Democratic bill. Britt said it “goes far beyond IVF. It also affects religious freedom and protection.”
In the wake of the Alabama Supreme Court ruling, Christians, who have been a driving force in the anti-abortion movement based on the belief that life begins at or near conception, have struggled with fertility treatment.
The Southern Baptist Convention this week approved a non-binding resolution which warned couples about the use of in vitro fertilization. O regretted resolution that the creation of surplus frozen embryos often results in the “destruction of embryonic human life”.
The bill proposed by Britt and Cruz was also criticized by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative group that has been pushing for strict regulations on IVF clinics.
With the Senate deadlocked on the issue, advocates for access to treatment said families would still be left in uncertainty.
Jamie Heard, who lives in Birmingham and had to suspend her efforts to have a second child through in vitro fertilization when the state Supreme Court made its decision, said the ruling left her scared and angry. She was able to continue treatment but spoke alongside other IVF advocates on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to urge lawmakers to act.
“We still have a lot of questions about how to move forward,” Heard said.
