Americans want to protect IVF amid abortion battles, but Senate disagrees on path forward

Washington- Americans appear to be in rare agreement when it comes to IVF, with surveys indicating broad support for safeguarding access to fertility treatments. But how Congress might act to ensure these protections in the face of perceived threats in the states is another question. And in the Senate, lawmakers appear to disagree on the path forward.

A Alabama Supreme Court Decision earlier this year, which deemed embryos children under state law and prompted providers to halt fertility treatments in the state, brought national attention to IVF. Although the state Legislature has taken steps to protect access to the procedure, the development has raised concerns about similar measures elsewhere.

And when Democrats tried to blame Republicans for opening a new front in the battle for reproductive rights, the Republican Party quickly expressed support for fertility treatments because the possibility of restrictions on access to IVF threatened to become a liability in the November elections.

But in the Senate, competing bills to protect access to fertility treatments illustrate the continuing partisan divide.

This week, Republican lawmakers introduced new legislation to protect access to IVF, calling for bipartisan support. But the bill was quickly welcomed by Democrats, who questioned its scope and mechanics while emphasizing their own idea of ​​the path forward.

“We have a much better proposal and Republicans should support it,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters when asked this week about the GOP bill, adding that a proposal from Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth had been “carefully developed”.

The GOP bill, called the IVF Protection Act, would require states “not to prohibit in vitro fertilization” as a condition of receiving federal funding for Medicaid, which provides health insurance to low-income people. The bill makes clear that it does not require any organization or individual to provide IVF services, nor does it prevent states from otherwise regulating IVF.

But the bill’s chances in the Democratic-controlled Senate were quickly dashed.

Shortly after Republican Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Katie Britt of Alabama introduced the bill, Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat who also introduced IVF legislation, criticized the bill , saying it would “promote deep red states to defund Medicaid and ban IVF nationally.” at the same time.”

Cruz pushed back on the claim, telling CBS News it was a “ridiculous accusation” because no state would forgo federal dollars, while arguing that spending requirements are a common way to impose federal requirements .

“Democrats want to fearmonger on the issue of IVF and a straightforward, simple bill that protects IVF at the federal level terrifies them because it takes away the political issue they want to use to scare voters,” said Cruz, adding that “anyone who truly supports IVF should be an enthusiastic supporter of this bill.”

But Democrats also argue that the definition of IVF, “the practice by which eggs are collected from the ovaries and manually fertilized by sperm, to then be placed inside the uterus,” is too narrow, alleging that it would not fully protect fertility treatments. .

Barbara Collura, CEO of Resolve: The National Infertility Association, said that under the bill, states could still pursue a number of paths to regulating IVF, such as banning genetic testing of embryos, limiting the number of embryos created or ban cryopreservation or freezing of embryos, which she said “would make providing care very difficult,” while avoiding losing federal funding.

“So it’s very smart,” said Collura, whose organization helped write the Democratic IVF legislation. “Lawmakers can honestly say, ‘Hey, we didn’t ban IVF.'”

Duckworth told CBS News that “the problem we have to address is the fact that all of these states are starting to define a fertilized egg as a human child,” citing the Alabama Supreme Court’s action, which stems from a wrongful death lawsuit where the court determined that frozen embryos stored for fertility treatments could be considered children.

“Senator Cruz’s bill therefore does not address the problem at hand, namely the decision by far-right extremist activists and anti-choice people to ban state after state from access to choice and get to the point where they claim a fertilized egg is a human child,” she said.

Earlier this year, Duckworth try to obtain the adoption of a measure aimed at protecting access to IVF with unanimous consent. But a Republican senator opposed it, saying it would go too far.

The law on access to family construction would create a statutory right of access to assisted reproduction services such as IVF. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, Republican of Mississippi, opposed the motion to pass the bill unanimously, calling it a “vast overreach.” She warned that, among other things, it would legalize “the creation of human-animal chimeras,” although she did not specify the term or explain what had sparked her concern.

“I support the ability for mothers and fathers to have full access to IVF and bring new life into the world,” she said. “I also believe that human life must be protected – these are not mutually exclusive.”

The impasse on this issue comes as at least 23 states have proposed personhood bills that could impact access to IVF treatments, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that studies the reproductive health. And Americans largely want to ensure access to IVF, according to a CBS News poll. In a investigation released in March, 86% of Americans said they want IVF to remain legal.

Cruz said of his legislation that, on substance, “it should be 100 to nothing” in the House.

“If there are Democrats who oppose it, their only reasoning will be that they want to treat it as a political issue rather than doing something meaningful to protect it,” he added.

Despite commitments from both sides to protect access to fertility treatments, compromise seems unlikely.

“When they accuse me of trying to create human-animal hybrids, I don’t know how there can be bipartisanship when that’s absolutely not true,” Duckworth said.

Collura said that for Republicans who believe that an egg fertilized outside the body is a person, “it’s going to be really, really difficult for you to protect IVF in the way that care is provided today.”

“I feel like it could be very nonpartisan, and I always thought building a family was nonpartisan,” she said. “Yet we know that when you call that fertilized egg a person, it’s very difficult for you to support IVF. And so I don’t know if we can get to a point where we’ll have enough Republicans to really protect it like it must be protected.”