Senate Republicans Strike Down IVF Protection Bill
WASHINGTON — The Senate failed to approve a bill Tuesday that would expand women’s rights to in vitro fertilization in the face of ongoing opposition from Republicans.
It was the second time in three months Republicans blocked the Right to IVF Act despite popular opinion polls showing growing support for it.
The bill provides a statutory right to fertility treatments, such as in vitro fertilization, and allows women to decide how their embryos and other reproductive genetic material are used.
Other portions of the proposed legislation would expand IVF insurance coverage and protect health care fertility specialists from liability.
Democratic leaders submitted the Right to IVF Act a second time for a Senate vote after both the Democratic and Republican candidates for president spoke in favor of wider access for women to IVF treatments.
Two Republicans, Susan Collins, of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska, voted for the bill but it still failed to get the 60 votes it needed to break through a filibuster. The vote was 51-44.
Many Republicans who voted against the bill said they favor IVF but that the Right to IVF Act goes too far in promoting the treatments.
After the vote, Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement that Republicans “have once again made clear that they will not protect access to the fertility treatments many couples need to fulfill their dream of having a child.”
“Their opposition to a woman’s freedom to make decisions about her own body is extreme, dangerous and wrong,” she said.
IVF became a hot issue during the presidential campaign after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled in February that embryos are children, which led health care providers to halt fertility treatments in the state.
Since then, former President Donald Trump joined in recommendations for IVF to be covered by insurance.
“I have been a leader on fertilization, IVF,” he claimed during his debate with Harris this month.
Christian conservatives criticized Trump for his comment, particularly for not speaking out against the destruction of embryos.
Democrats said IVF is part of a larger question on reproductive rights, such as abortion.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said at a news conference that his party’s leaders submitted the Right to IVF Act to a second vote hoping that Trump’s newly announced support of the treatments would make enough of his Republican colleagues change their minds.
Instead, the vote Tuesday mirrored the previous Senate vote in June.
Republican Sens. Katie Britt, of Alabama, and Ted Cruz, of Texas, have introduced alternative legislation that would make access to IVF a condition for states to receive federal Medicaid funding.
Democrats, such as Sen. Patty Murray, of Washington, quickly dismissed the proposal. She said it “does nothing to meaningfully protect IVF from the biggest threats from lawmakers and anti-abortion extremists all over this country.”
No other alternatives are pending in the Senate.
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