In a test for Republicans ahead of the Nov. 5 election, the Senate will vote next week on a bill that would establish a nationwide right to in-vitro fertilization (IVF).
Republicans blocked the bill in June in a 48–47 procedural vote that failed to pass the 60-vote threshold to overcome a filibuster.
“The Senate will vote once again to take up the very same bill we voted on earlier this summer, establishing a nationwide right to IVF and making it easier for people to access this critical treatment,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who supports the bill, said on the Senate floor.
“Republicans can’t claim to be pro-family on one hand, only to block pro-family policies like federal protections for IVF and the child tax credit. But that’s what they did this summer, and I hope we get a different outcome when we vote for a second time.”
The bill would also mandate that private and public insurance cover IVF and would expand IVF access for military members and veterans.
“This is not a ‘show vote.’ It’s a ‘show us who you are’ vote,” Schumer said ahead of the vote in June. “Today, unfortunately, it seems our Republican colleagues are going to show us just who they are—people who will not protect a woman’s right to IVF.”
In a June 12 statement, 49 Republicans wrote, “In vitro fertilization is legal and available in every state across our nation. We strongly support continued nationwide access to IVF, which has allowed millions of aspiring parents to start and grow their families.”
IVF has come into the spotlight since the Alabama Supreme Court ruled on Feb. 16 that an egg fertilized through IVF is a life.
It also has been front and center in the election, as the Democratic vice presidential nominee and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has talked about himself and his wife having their first child, Hope Walz, through a procedure similar to IVF called intrauterine insemination (IUI).
Former President Donald Trump has pledged that, if reelected, he would order insurance companies and the government to cover IVF treatments.
“We are going to be, under the Trump administration, we are going to be paying for that treatment,” he told NBC News in an interview last month. “We’re going to be mandating that the insurance company pay.”
From The Epoch Times