WASHINGTON — The Senate failed again Tuesday to advance legislation that would protect access to in vitro fertilization, the latest partisan battle over reproductive health care amid the 2024 presidential election.
The 51-44 vote on the Right to IVF Act, which would bar state restrictions on the procedure and require insurance coverage, fell short of the 60 votes needed to pass, just as it did in June — and as Democrats expected it would. For them, the vote put many Senate Republicans on the record again as seemingly opposing broad IVF access and delivered new attack lines for an election that many see as a referendum on reproductive rights.
Two Republicans, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowksi and Maine Sen. Susan Collins, joined Democrats to support the bill this week, as they had three months ago. The majority of their caucus repeated arguments that the bill is Democrats’ ploy to score political points and that there is no threat to IVF access.
The bill is a chance for Democrats to message politically. Murkowski told STAT it’s a chance for her, too.
“This is Democrats’ effort to put Republicans on this spot and say your nominee has said this, and you are voting this way, and to create confusion out there,” Murkowski said. They’re “doing a pretty good job” of creating that confusion, she added. “I want the people that I represent in Alaska to know that for me, if you want to know what my message is, my message is I support IVF.”
Tuesday’s vote underscores the political diciness of reproductive rights for many Republicans, even as former President Donald Trump tries to downplay divides and confusion created by the overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022. The former president said recently that he would make IVF free-of-cost for all Americans, through either federal funding or insurance coverage mandates.
Yet many Republican senators cite the bill’s broad requirement to cover IVF — which they say could violate some employers’ religious views — as their main reason for opposing it. Murkowski said that’s the primary reason she abandoned efforts to turn it into bipartisan legislation earlier this year.
Alabama’s inadvertent IVF ban earlier this year looms large over Republicans struggling to distance themselves from the reproductive rights debate, and insist there is no threat to IVF access embedded in abortion restrictions or personhood laws. Democrats say it was fair play to bring the doomed bill up once more after former President Trump said “I have been a leader on IVF, which is fertilization, the IVF,” on the debate stage earlier this month.
“Last time, Republicans killed this bill, and Trump said nothing. Now he says he is a leader on IVF,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) told reporters ahead of the Tuesday vote. “The only reason IVF is in jeopardy is because Donald Trump overturned Roe — something he has never stopped bragging about.”
Murray blocked a vote on GOP-led IVF legislation the same day, arguing the bill from Sens. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Katie Britt (Ala.) leaves loopholes for states to restrict the procedure. Efforts to construct a bipartisan version — as some House lawmakers did this summer — have also faltered, mostly over requirements that every insurer cover IVF.
“This is about gaining political advantage in a presidential race. It’s not about addressing a true need,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said.