Senate Republicans Tank the Right to IVF Act Again

Today's vote marks the second time this year the GOP has blocked this specific bill, but the fourth time since 2022 that they've blocked a bill intended to protect IVF.

By Kylie Cheung | September 17, 2024 | 6:50pm

Politics 2024 Election

Senate Republicans Tank the Right to IVF Act Again

From left, Sen Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). Photo: Getty Images

On Tuesday, Senate Republicans tanked the Right to IVF Act, which would codify a right to provide and receive fertility services, and accused Democrats of pulling an election-year stunt. It’s the second time this year they’ve blocked this specific bill, but the fourth time since 2022 they’ve blocked a bill to protect IVF. Though the Right to IVF Act received a majority of the vote by a 51 to 44 margin on Tuesday, it didn’t meet the threshold to pass. Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Suan Collins of Maine were, once again, the only Republican senators who voted in favor of the bill. Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee was the 44th vote.

Republican vice presidential nominee and current Ohio senator JD Vance defended his vote by accusing Democrats of “political games.” His spokesperson maintained that Vance and Donald Trump “have made themselves crystal clear: They fully support guaranteed IVF access for every American family.” (In reality, by helping overturn Roe v. Wade, Trump is the reason the fertility treatment is in jeopardy at all.) Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.), similarly accused Democrats of “another show vote,” adding, “This is not an attempt to make law. This is not an attempt to get an outcome or to legislate. This is simply an attempt by Democrats to try and create a political issue where there isn’t one.”

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But, of course, IVF is a “political issue.” Fertility services like IVF have been jeopardized by abortion bans and any policymaking rooted in fetal personhood—which is what we saw in February when Alabama’s Supreme Court recognized unused embryos as “extrauterine children,” meaning their routine destruction during IVF could qualify for wrongful death lawsuits. In February, Republicans, specifically Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), blocked the Access to Family Building Act, which similarly would have established a federal right to IVF and was introduced by Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.). Hyde-Smith also blocked an earlier version of that bill, the Right to Build Families Act, in 2022. Democrats then introduced the Right to IVF Act in June, which Republicans blocked, accusing them of “partisan electoral politics.”

Ahead of Tuesday’s vote, Senate Republicans led by Ted Cruz once again introduced a disingenuous bill that claims to protect IVF by threatening to withhold funding from states if they enact explicit bans on IVF. But it’s unlikely any state will actually enact an outright ban on the fertility service—IVF will instead be pushed out of reach by abortion laws that say life begins at conception, or restrictions on aspects of the IVF process, as we saw in Alabama. In May, when Cruz first introduced the bill, Barbara Collura, president of RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association, told Jezebel, “It would be very easy for states to say ‘IVF is still legal but has to be done in a particular way,’ in a particular way that clinics can’t do, but still adhere to the bill.”

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) shut down a vote on Cruz’s bill Tuesday afternoon and warned that it’s “silent on fetal personhood, which is the biggest threat to IVF.” Murray continued in her floor remarks, “It is silent on whether states can demand that an embryo be treated the same as a living breathing person, or whether parents should be allowed to have clinics dispose of unused embryos—something that is a common, necessary part of the IVF process.”

Republicans’ latest vote against IVF comes as Trump continues to bizarrely campaign on the issue, which includes lying that he would introduce a program to cover IVF for all. But he’s only posturing on IVF because the GOP has come under intense scrutiny in recent months for threatening access to the procedure. In February, Tennessee Republicans blocked a bill to enshrine protections for IVF and birth control, arguing it would weaken their total abortion ban. The North Carolina Republican Party’s official 2024 platform, adopted in June, opposes the destruction of human embryos, which seemingly calls for a ban on IVF. In May, the Texas GOP ratified their official 2024 platform, which called for the criminalization of IVF. The Southern Baptist Convention—the largest and most politically powerful Protestant denomination in the nation—voted to oppose IVF during their June convention.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer brought the vote on Tuesday, not despite but because it was clear Republicans would vote the same way they did in June. With less than 50 days to the election, it’s part of a sustained strategy by Democrats to put the GOP on the record against IVF. Now, if only Schumer would bring the Stop Comstock Act to a vote to repeal a zombie law that could be weaponized for a national abortion ban!