Senate voting on IVF package as Democrats look to corner GOP

Washington — The Senate is voting Tuesday on legislation to protect access to IVF as Democrats look to draw attention to Republicans’ positions on the issue following former President Donald Trump’s statements supporting the fertility treatments.

The package, called the Right to IVF Act, centers on a right to receive and provide IVF services, while working to make the treatments more affordable. The legislation was blocked by Senate Republicans just three months ago.

Now, Democrats are daring the GOP to reconsider their votes, with fewer than 50 days until Election Day.

“If Donald Trump and Republicans want to protect people’s right to access IVF, they can vote yes on it,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, who sponsored the legislation, said in an interview with CBS News. “He’s shown that it only takes one sentence from him, and the Republican Party will fall in line behind him.”

The issue was thrust into the national spotlight early this year, when the Alabama Supreme Court deemed that embryos are children under state law, which prompted providers to temporarily halt fertility treatments in the state. Since then, amid concern about access to IVF in Alabama and beyond, many Republicans have expressed their support for the popular fertility treatments, including Trump in last week’s presidential debate. 

Democrats have sought to tie IVF to reproductive rights more broadly, arguing that the 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade opened the door to restrictions on other procedures.

“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,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a letter to colleagues on Sunday, adding that “IVF has become one of the hard-right’s next targets.”

The New York Democrat said the upper chamber would vote again on the package due to Trump’s recent pledges of support for the issue, including backing a mandate that would require insurance companies to cover IVF services, which is also a provision in the Democratic-led legislation. All but two Senate Republicans voted against the bill in June.

“So, we are going to give our Republican colleagues another chance to show the American people where they stand,” Schumer wrote. 

Senate Republicans have repeatedly expressed support for IVF, while claiming that the  Democratic package goes too far. And when two GOP senators unveiled their own package to protect access to the procedure in May, Democrats quickly rejected it, questioning its scope and its enforcement mechanism, which makes continued access to IVF a condition for states to receive federal funding for Medicaid.

The two sides have yet to identify a bipartisan path forward on the issue as they head toward what will likely be another failed vote on the IVF legislation Tuesday. 

Trump has been under pressure from multiple sides in recent months over reproductive rights. While he’s often touted his appointment of three of the Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, he’s also said he believes that abortion should now be left up to the states. And his recent statements in support of expanding access to IVF, while claiming to be a “leader on fertilization,” have earned him rebukes from conservatives who oppose the practice.