Liam Conner
Washington – Americans rarely seem to agree when it comes to IVF, with surveys indicating broad support for safeguarding access to fertility treatments. But how Congress could act to ensure these protections amid perceived threats to the states is another question. And in the Senate, lawmakers appear to be at odds over the path forward.
One Alabama Supreme Court Ruling earlier this year, which ruled that embryos are children under state law and led providers to halt fertility treatments in the state, brought in vitro fertilization to national attention. While the state legislature has taken steps to protect access to the procedure, the development has raised concerns about similar measures elsewhere.
And when Democrats tried to blame Republicans for opening a new front in the battle for reproductive rights, the Republican Party moved quickly to express support for fertility treatments, as the possibility of restrictions on access to in vitro fertilization threatened to become a risk in the November elections.
But in the Senate, divergent bills to protect access to fertility treatments illustrate the persistent partisan divide.
This week, Republican lawmakers introduced new legislation to protect access to IVF, inciting bipartisan support. But the bill was quickly rejected by Democrats, who questioned its scope and mechanism while pointing to their own idea of a way forward.
“We have a much better proposal and Republicans should support it,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters when asked about the GOP bill this week, adding that a proposal from Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth it was “made with care”.
The GOP bill, called the IVF Protection Act, would require states to “not prohibit in vitro fertilization” as a condition of receiving federal funding for Medicaid, which provides health insurance for low-income people. The bill makes clear that it does not require an organization or individual to provide IVF services and does not prevent states from otherwise regulating IVF.
But the bill’s prospects in the Democratic-controlled Senate were quickly dashed.
Shortly after Republican Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Katie Britt of Alabama introduced the legislation, Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat who also introduced in vitro fertilization legislation, criticized the bill, claiming that this would “incentivize deep red states to defund Medicaid and ban IVF at the same time.”
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Cruz rejected the claim, telling CBS News it is a “ridiculous accusation” because no state would give up federal dollars, while also arguing that spending conditions are a common means of imposing federal requirements.
“Democrats want to fear the IVF issue, and a straightforward, simple bill that protects IVF at the federal level terrifies them because it takes away the political issue they want to use to scare voters,” Cruz said, adding that “anyone who genuinely supports IVF should be an enthusiastic supporter of this bill.”
But Democrats also argue that the bill’s definition of in vitro fertilization, “the practice in which eggs are collected from the ovaries and fertilized manually by sperm for later placement inside the uterus,” is too narrow, claiming it would not protect complete fertility treatments. .
Barbara Collura, CEO of Resolve: The National Infertility Association, said that under the bill, states could still pursue a number of avenues to regulate IVF, such as banning genetic testing on embryos, limiting the number of embryos created or prohibit cryopreservation or freezing of embryos, which she said “would make it very difficult to provide care,” while avoiding the loss of federal funding.
“So it’s very smart,” said Collura, whose organization helped write Democratic in vitro fertilization legislation. “Lawmakers can very sincerely say, ‘Hey, we don’t ban IVF.’”
Duckworth told CBS News that “the problem we need to address is the fact that all of these states are starting to define a fertilized egg as a human child,” citing the Alabama Supreme Court’s action, which resulted from a wrongful death lawsuit. where the court ruled that frozen embryos stored for fertility treatments could be considered children.
“So Senator Cruz’s bill does not address the issue at hand, which is the action of far-right extremist activists and anti-choice people to, in state after state after state, basically prohibit access to choice and reach to the point where they are claiming that a fertilized egg is a human child,” she said.
Mark Schiefelbein/AP
Earlier this year, Duckworth tested to ensure passage of a measure to protect access to IVF under unanimous consent. But a Republican senator objected, saying it would go too far.
The Family Building Access Act would create a legal right to access assisted reproductive services, such as in vitro fertilization. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Mississippi, opposed the motion to pass the bill unanimously, calling it a “gross overreach.” She warned that, among other things, this would legalize “the creation of human-animal chimeras,” although she did not elaborate on the term or explain what prompted her concern.
“I support the possibility of mothers and fathers having full access to IVF and bringing a new life into the world,” she said. “I also believe that human life must be protected – these things are not mutually exclusive.”
The impasse on the issue comes as at least 23 states have proposed personhood bills that could impact access to IVF treatments, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that studies reproductive health. And Americans largely want to safeguard access to in vitro fertilization, a CBS News poll found. On a survey launched in March, 86% of Americans said they want to keep IVF legal.
Cruz said of his legislation that, on the merits, “it should be 100 to nothing” in the House.
“If there are Democrats who oppose this, their only reasoning would be that they want to claim it as a political issue rather than do anything meaningful to protect it,” he added.
Despite commitments from both sides of the aisle to protect access to fertility treatment, compromise appears unlikely.
“When people accuse me of trying to create human-animal hybrids, I don’t know how there is bipartisanship when that’s absolutely not true,” Duckworth said.
Collura said that for Republicans who believe that an egg fertilized outside the body is a person, “it will be very difficult for you to protect IVF in the way care is provided today.”
“I feel like it can be so nonpartisan, and I’ve always felt like family building is nonpartisan,” she said. “However, we know that when you call that fertilized egg a person, it is very difficult for you to support IVF. And so I don’t know if we can get to a point where we have enough Republicans actually protecting him in the way that he needs to. to be protected.”
