Senate to vote again on IVF protections in election-year push

[September 17, 2024]  By MARY CLARE JALONICK

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate will vote for the second time this year on legislation that would establish a nationwide right to in vitro fertilization — Democrats’ latest election-year attempt to force Republicans into a defensive stance on women’s health issues.

The bill, which the Senate will vote on Tuesday, has little chance of passing this Congress, as Republicans already blocked the same bill earlier this year. But Democrats are hoping to use the do-over vote to put pressure on Republican congressional candidates and lay out a contrast between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump in the presidential race, especially as Trump has called himself a “ leader on IVF.”

The push started earlier this year after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law. Several clinics in the state suspended IVF treatments until the GOP-led legislature rushed to enact a law to provide legal protections for the clinics.

Democrats quickly capitalized, holding a vote in June on the bill from Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth and warning that the U.S. Supreme Court could go after the procedure next after it overturned the right to an abortion in 2022. The legislation would also increase access to the procedure and lower costs.

“The hard right has set its sights on a new target,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the floor Monday.

All but two Republicans voted against the Democratic legislation, arguing that the federal government shouldn’t tell states what to do. They said the bill was an unserious effort.

Still, Republicans have scrambled to counter Democrats on the issue, with many making clear that they support IVF treatments. Trump last month announced plans, without additional details, to require health insurance companies or the federal government to pay for the common fertility treatment.

The Capitol is seen from the Russell Senate Office Building as Congress returns from a district work week, in Washington, March 24, 2014. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

In his debate with Harris earlier this month, Trump said he was a “leader” on the issue and talked about the “very negative” decision by the Alabama court that was later reversed by the legislature.

But the issue has threatened to become a vulnerability for Republicans as some state laws passed by their own party grant legal personhood not only to fetuses but to any embryos that are destroyed in the IVF process.

Duckworth, a military veteran who has used the fertility treatment to have her two children, has led the Senate effort on the legislation. “How dare you,’” she said in comments directed toward her GOP colleagues after the first vote blocking the bill.

Republicans have tried to push alternatives on the issue, including legislation that would discourage states from enacting explicit bans on the treatment, but those bills have been blocked by Democrats who say it is not enough.

Republican Sens. Katie Britt of Alabama and Ted Cruz of Texas tried in June to pass a bill that would threaten to withhold Medicaid funding for states where IVF is banned. Sen. Rick Scott, a Florida Republican, said in a floor speech then that his daughter was currently receiving IVF treatment and proposed to expand the flexibility of health savings accounts.

Cruz, who is running for reelection in Texas, said it showed Democrats' efforts to pass legislation were a “cynical political decision.”

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