The Senate is set to vote Tuesday for the second time on a measure that seeks to protect and expand access to in vitro fertilization services.
“Today, Senate Republicans must answer a simple question: Do they support in vitro fertilization or not?" Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., asked on Tuesday ahead of the vote.
The expected vote follows former President Donald Trump’s recent pledge to make insurance companies pay for the treatments, a proposal Schumer noted is included in the Right to IVF Act legislation, which Senate Republicans blocked in June.
“But as our national debate on reproductive rights has continued to unfold, we have seen the Republican Party’s nominee for president claim to be ‘a leader in fertilization’ and come out in support of expanding access to IVF by requiring insurance companies to cover IVF treatment – a key provision included in the Right to IVF Act,” Schumer said in a letter addressed to his colleagues on Sunday. “So, we are going to give our Republican colleagues another chance to show the American people where they stand.”
The issue of IVF burst into the political spotlight earlier this year after a decision from Alabama’s Supreme Court declaring that frozen embryos are considered children led to fertility clinics in the state to close their doors and sparked questions about future access to the treatments nationwide. (Alabama legislators later passed a law signed by the state's Republican governor to reverse the ruling.)
It also added another political layer to Democrats’ efforts to highlight the issue of reproductive rights on the campaign trail following the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
“From the moment the ‘MAGA’ Supreme Court reversed Roe as Donald Trump promised they would, Democrats warned that the hard-right would not stop there in eliminating reproductive freedoms,” Schumer wrote in his letter. “Over the past few months, our worst fears have been confirmed, as IVF has become one of the hard-right’s next targets.”
Following the Alabama decision, Democrats quickly moved to add IVF to their messaging against Republicans on the topic, including bringing the Right to IVF Act to the floor in June this summer. Only two Republicans crossed the aisle to support the legislation, which would establish a statutory right to access such treatments and seek to bring down the costs through measures such as requiring employer-sponsored insurance plans and other public insurance plans. Republicans at the time criticized the vote as a political move by Democrats.
But since then, Trump has declared himself a “leader” on the issue during last week’s presidential debate and announced a policy proposal mandating that the federal government or individual insurance providers would pay for all costs associated with IVF treatment if he is elected again.
“I've been a leader on it. They know that and everybody else knows it. I have been a leader on fertilization, IVF,” Trump said during the debate last week, also referring to the Alabama Supreme Court ruling as a “negative decision.”
Trump’s proposal has made some Republicans uneasy, including Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who said he would not support the move, saying “there’s no end to that.”
“The American people deserve another chance to see if Senate Republicans will back up their words and vote for access to IVF or vote against it,” Schumer said in his Sunday letter. “It's that simple.”
Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which sent the issue of whether and how much to restrict access to abortion back to individual states and led to bans across the country as a result, Democrats believe reproductive freedom is a winning issue for the party. They point to red states like Kansas and Ohio voting to protect access to abortion and polls showing the majority of Americans disapprove of Roe’s reversal.