Senate Democrats introduce legislative protections for IVF

WASHINGTON — A group of Senate Democrats is announcing a legislative package to protect in vitro fertilization Monday, an election-year push to put reproductive rights at center stage.

The Right to IVF Act, led by Sens. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, Patty Murray of Washington and Cory Booker of New Jersey, includes four bills to preserve access to IVF and make it more affordable to get the procedure, which has helped millions of families have children. The four bills, which had been introduced previously, are the Access to Family Building Act, the Veteran Families Health Services Act, the Access to Infertility Treatment and Care Act and the Family Building FEHB Fairness Act (FEHB stands for Federal Employees Health Benefit).

“In the nearly two years since the Supreme Court threw out Roe v. Wade, our nation has seen the horrific consequences of Republicans’ anti-science, anti-woman crusade that has put IVF at risk for millions of Americans who rely on it to start or grow their family,” Duckworth said in a statement.

Duckworth, who used IVF to have her two daughters, said that “struggling with infertility is painful enough — every American deserves the right to access the treatment.”

The legislation would establish a statutory right for patients to access IVF, protect providers from legal liability, ensure service members and veterans have access to the procedure and require more health insurers to cover fertility care.

“Republican attacks on reproductive rights since the Dobbs decision have not stopped at abortion—their reckless crusade to criminalize basic reproductive health care and give embryos the exact same rights as living, breathing human beings has put IVF in jeopardy and endangered the lives of pregnant women,” Murray said.

The debate drew national attention after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled in February that embryos created by IVF are children, a decision that met widespread backlash across both sides of the aisle. The ruling left doctors and families in fear of being sued; during the IVF process, embryos are often discarded if they have genetic abnormalities or after patients decide they won’t need to use them. Republican Gov. Kay Ivey later signed legislation shielding IVF providers from legal repercussions.

The issue proved to be a political liability for Republicans who have pushed strict anti-abortion policies and have said they believe life begins at conception. A CBS News/YouGov poll in March found that 86% of Americans think IVF should be legal.

After the Alabama ruling, Duckworth sought to pass the Access to Family Building Act, which is in the new package, by unanimous consent on the floor. It was blocked by Sen. Cindy Hyde Smith, R-Miss., who said in her objection that the Alabama decision “did not ban IVF, nor has any state banned IVF.”

Sens. Katie Britt, R-Ala., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, then introduced their own proposal that claims to safeguard IVF last month. The bill, titled the IVF Protection Act, wouldn’t compel providers to offer IVF, but states would lose Medicaid funding if they outright banned access to the procedure.

The legislation was quickly met with backlash from reproductive rights groups and Senate Democrats, who say that it falls short because of its vague definition of the procedure that excludes discarding frozen embryos and that it doesn’t explicitly prohibit states from implementing restrictive policies surrounding IVF.

“Unlike GOP legislation that would not protect IVF and is only a PR tool for Republicans to hide their extremism, our Right to IVF Act would actually protect Americans from attempts to restrict IVF and would allow more people to access these vital services at a lower cost,” Murray said in a statement.

Duckworth also dismissed the bill from her Republican colleagues, arguing that it would provide incentives for states to both ban IVF and defund Medicaid at the same time, which she said Republican-controlled legislatures have fought to do for decades.

The competing fertility bills highlight the partisan standoff over the issue as 13 states have introduced fetal personhood bills that would affect the legality of IVF.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced that the Senate will focus on protecting reproductive rights in June, timed to coincide with the second anniversary of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. The move is meant to put GOP senators on record on tough issues in the months leading up to the election and bring abortion rights to the forefront of the conversation as Democrats try to hold on to their majority.

The Senate this week will take up the Right to Contraception Act, which would protect a person’s ability to access contraceptives and a health care provider’s ability to offer them. The bill is expected to fail in the closely divided Senate, where most Republicans oppose it.

Democrats say they feel strongly that Congress needs to enshrine reproductive rights, but the path to enact any legislation, including bills to protect IVF, with their slim majority is bleak.

“My ultimate goal is to restore Roe v. Wade and obviously to protect doctors, to make sure that we have access to IVF, to make sure that doctors are not jailed for decisions they make that are medically appropriate,” Murray said at a news conference on how the Dobbs decision has affected health care workers. “Every time, we’ve been rejected by Republicans.”