Sen. Mitt Romney: Democrats used IVF bill as ‘a messaging opportunity’

Earlier this month, former President Donald Trump called himself a “leader on IVF” at the presidential debate, while drawing a comparison with Vice President Kamala Harris’ on women’s health issues.
His statement came months after Republicans in the Senate blocked a bill that would establish in vitro fertilization as a right, and after Democrats claimed Republicans were against fertility treatments.
The Senate blocked another IVF bill on Tuesday in a 51-44 vote that required 60 votes to pass. Only two Republicans — Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Susan Collins, R-Maine — voted in support of the Right to IVF Act, which would establish a right “to receive fertility treatment from a health care provider” and empower the Justice Department to pursue lawsuits against those who hamper that “right.”
Republicans who opposed the bill argue they support IVF treatments, but don’t favor putting mandates on insurance companies.
Utah Sen. Mitt Romney said the Democrats used the bill as “a messaging opportunity,” as Politico reported. The Republican senator added the bill included “poison pills that Republicans find unacceptable.”
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., the Republican whip, said Democrats are trying to politicize the issue.
“Let me remind everybody that Republicans support IVF, full stop,” Thune said prior to the vote, according to The Associated Press.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Trump loyalist from Georgia, defended Senate Republicans by saying she’s “against health care for all.”
“I think that’s opening up a door that Republicans aren’t willing to open. I’m not for government-mandated funding of IVF,” she added, as NBC News reported.
Republicans had blocked the same bill from passing earlier in June, but Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer forced a vote on it again.
Ahead of the Tuesday vote, Schumer, in a “dear colleagues” letter obtained by Punchbowl News, said, “The American people deserve another chance to see if Senate Republicans will back up their words and vote for access to IVF or vote against it. It’s that simple.”
His move came after Trump vowed to require insurance companies to cover IVF treatments. “I’m announcing today in a major statement that under the Trump administration, your government will pay for — or your insurance company will be mandated to pay for — all costs associated with IVF treatment,” Trump said at a Michigan event last month. “Because we want more babies, to put it nicely.”
Democrats proposed the bill earlier this year after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos should be considered as an unborn child under state law. The decision led IVF treatment clinics to pause their work, affecting millions of Americans who face infertility. Alabama lawmakers then passed another law with protections for IVF treatments and providers.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., who introduced the U.S. Senate bill, said, “Republicans proved that when the rubber meets the road they will do anything to get out of actually passing legislation that would protect women’s right to access reproductive care.”
In 2021, more than 86,000 infants, or 2.3% of infants born in the U.S., were conceived through treatments like IVF, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.