Tim Walz’s Wife Says She Underwent Intrauterine Insemination, Not IVF

In a statement issued on Tuesday, Gwen Walz, the wife of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, clarified that she underwent intrauterine insemination (IUI) rather than in vitro fertilization (IVF) to have children.

Earlier this month, Gov. Walz addressed his highly personal connection to the use of fertility treatments in his first speech after Kamala Harris picked him as her running mate.

“When my wife and I decided to have children, we spent years going through infertility treatments,” he said at the time. “And I remember praying every night for a call for good news, the pit in my stomach when the phone rang, and the agony when we heard that the treatments hadn’t worked.”

Back in March, after an Alabama court halted IVF procedures in the state, Walz’s team sent a fundraising email that shared an article referencing “his family’s IVF journey” in the headline. Walz also recently criticized Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), the Republican candidate for vice president, by saying, “If it was up to him, I wouldn’t have a family because of IVF.”

Mia Ehrenberg, a Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson, defended Walz’s comments and denied that he had been misleading.

“Gov. Walz talks how normal people talk,” she said. “He was using commonly understood shorthand for fertility treatments.”

Eve Feinberg, MD, of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, told MedPage Today that “the key difference” between IUI and IVF “is where fertilization occurs.”

IUI involves taking a sample of sperm and placing it directly into the uterus, said Feinberg, who is also a fellow for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, adding that the sperm still have to fertilize the egg inside the body. However, in IVF, fertilization occurs in the laboratory.

Generally speaking, couples will often pursue IUI first and move on to IVF if not successful, Feinberg explained, noting that IVF is more involved than IUI, and also more politically charged due to the potential for embryo destruction and embryonic loss.

In her statement, Gwen Walz said, “Like millions of families across the country, for years, Tim and I tried to start a family through fertility treatments. We followed the journey that is infertility — the anxiety, the agony, and the desperation that can eat away at your soul.”

“Knowing that pain, I cannot fathom the cruelty of politicians who want to take away the freedom for couples to access the care they need,” she continued. “After seeing the extreme attacks on reproductive healthcare across the country — particularly, the efforts in Alabama that jeopardized access to fertility treatments — Tim and I agreed that it was time to formally speak out about our experience. Our experience taught us that there is always hope and we hope other families find solace in our story.”

Feinberg noted that “the point is that all of this is very deeply personal and really should be discussed between a physician and their patient.”

It isn’t in the “purview of the government to intervene in those very private discussions,” she added.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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