Republicans Play Down State Efforts To Ban IVF As They Block Federal Bill To Protect It – By Emine Yücel (TPM) / June 13, 2024
As Senate Republicans sought to explain away why they wouldn’t support the Democrats’ in vitro fertilization bill — an effort to protect and expand nationwide access to fertility treatment, including IVF — they shrugged off the idea that a real threat existed. IVF, they claimed, was certainly not imperiled at the state level.
“I certainly don’t hear that anywhere. I don’t see it anywhere. I’ve never heard anybody ever suggest that,” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS), an obstetrician, told TPM on Thursday when asked if he was worried about the possibility of states taking away access to IVF.
When approached with the same question, both Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) also told TPM, “no.”
Yet in Marshall and Hawley’s states, bills that would threaten IVF have been introduced in the state legislature. In Tuberville’s state of Alabama, the Supreme Court handed down a decision earlier this year that put a halt to IVF treatment, sending the state legislature scrambling to respond.
