WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats’ attempts to strengthen reproductive rights failed again Thursday when Republicans blocked a bill that would guarantee access to in vitro fertilization.
The 48-47 procedural vote came just one day after Republicans unsuccessfully tried to pass their own bill on access to artificial insemination, and one week after Republican senators prevented Bills that would have improved access to contraception could not advance. Senate rules require 60 votes for most bills.
Two Republicans, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, broke with their Republican colleagues and supported the IVF measure, which is now nearing a final vote. The two also voted last week to end the Access to Contraception Act.
In both debates, an overwhelming majority of Republican senators said the bills went too far or were too general. Democrats vehemently rejected that assessment, saying Republicans’ stance on certain reproductive rights was out of step with the views of most Americans.
Washington Democratic Senator Patty Murray said during the floor debate that the bill will ensure that patients have a right to access IVF and that doctors have the right to perform this fertility treatment, and will require more health insurance companies to cover the cost of IVF.
The package includes additional provisions designed to “help more veterans and military personnel who are having trouble getting pregnant get the important fertility services they need to start a family, including in vitro fertilization,” Murray said.
“This is something I’ve been advocating for for years, and it’s long overdue,” Murray said. “We owe it to all of those men and women who have fought to protect our families to make sure they have the support they need when they come home to grow their families.”
Murray said moving forward with the bill “should not be controversial, especially if Republicans are serious” about supporting access to IVF.
“As we saw in Alabama, the threat to IVF is neither hypothetical nor exaggerated, nor is it scaremongering,” Murray said.
“A show vote”
Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy spoke out against the bill during the floor debate, saying it was not a stern attempt to legislate and that no state currently bans assisted reproduction.
“I’m sitting here listening to this, and it just strikes me that my fellow Democratic senators have chosen to disrespect and deceive the American people by politicizing a deeply personal issue for short-term political purposes,” he said.
Cassidy, ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said if Democrats were stern about passing this bill, they would have brought it up for debate in committee before bringing it to the floor.
He also criticized the legislation for requiring private insurers to provide an unlimited number of fertility treatments while setting a cap on how many treatments a veteran can receive at a Department of Veterans Affairs clinic.
The Republicans, Cassidy said, “are quite willing to work with the Democrats in a sincere, bipartisan effort. But this is a show election.”
“Today’s vote is dishonest – pushing through a bill that is arbitrarily worded and doomed to fail does a disservice to everyone seeking IVF treatment,” Cassidy said.
Republican Party Bill
The Senate vote came a day after Alabama Senator Katie Britt and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, both Republicans, tries to pass their IVF bill through a fast-track process called unanimous consent.
Their bill would have blocked Medicaid funding from being distributed to states that prohibit IVF, but Democrats argued that the measure would not have effectively protected states from classifying frozen embryos as children.
Britt said during debate on her bill on Wednesday that she strongly supports nationwide access to IVF.
“Across America, about 2% of all babies are born through assisted reproduction – that’s about 200 babies a day,” Britt said. “Think about the magnitude of that number and the faces, stories and dreams it represents. Over the last few decades, millions of people have been born through assisted reproduction.”
Murray blocked passage of the Britt Cruz Act in the Senate on Wednesday after Cruz asked for unanimous consent to pass the bill. There was no roll call vote.
Protect access
The Senate Democrats’ IVF access bill was introduced earlier this month by Illinois Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth, Murray and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker.
The 64-page draft bill would have given people a right to access IVF and doctors a right to provide that health care without the state or federal government “imposing harmful or unjustified restrictions or requirements.”
The measure included provisions that would have improved access to IVF for military personnel and veterans, as well as their spouses, partners and surrogates.
The law defines fertility treatment as “the preservation of human eggs, sperm or embryos for later reproductive use, artificial insemination, genetic testing of embryos, use of drugs to enhance fertility and gamete donation.”
The bill defines assisted reproductive technology as follows: “It also includes in vitro fertilization and other treatments or procedures involving reproductive genetic material such as eggs, sperm, fertilized eggs and embryos, where clinically appropriate.”
Duckworth tried to pass a similar law by unanimous consent in February. But Mississippi Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith blocked approval through the expedited unanimous consent process. There was no roll call vote at the time.
Personal experience
Duckworth has spoken openly about her difficulties in starting a family and in vitro fertilization throughout her time as senator, including this year following the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision. governed that frozen embryos are children under state law.
During Thursday’s debate, she again spoke about her own experience with artificial insemination, saying that it was the reason she was allowed to hang her six-year-old’s drawings on the wall of her Senate office and let her nine-year-old harass her on Mother’s Day.
“I didn’t know it at the time, but infertility would become one of the most heartbreaking struggles of my life,” Duckworth said of her 23 years in the military, which included a helicopter crash in which she lost her legs. “My miscarriage was more painful than any wound I ever sustained on the battlefield.”
Duckworth said Republican opposition to the bill showed a lack of “decency and common sense.”
“Forgive me if I find it a little offensive when a bunch of politicians who have not spent a day in medical school suggest that those of us who needed the help of IVF to become mothers should be behind bars instead of rocking our babies to sleep in rocking chairs.”
