Senator Tammy Duckworth’s IVF Stunt – Wirepoints

By: Mark Glennon*

Can we please focus on issues instead of antics?

Last week, Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) grabbed headlines and press around the country as a vocal critic of supposed Republican efforts to ban IVF — in vitro fertilization.  That was after Senate Republicans blocked a bill she sponsored making access to IVF a federal right.

But it was all a stunt. It’s a non-issue. There’s no effort or meaningful political support anywhere to ban IVF.

Duckworth manufactured the issue with the most hyperbolic language available. “Our nation has seen the horrific consequences of Republicans’ anti-science, anti-woman crusade that has put IVF at risk for millions of Americans who rely on it to start or grow their family,” Duckworth said. “Despicable,” she said of the Republican response to her bill.

In truth, all Senate Republicans had signed an open letter saying they “strongly support continued nationwide access to IVF and offered their own bill protecting IVF. Senate Democrats, including Duckworth, blocked that Republican bill.

Some religious groups have expressed moral objections to IVF, but the only significant officeholders to have done so are four U.S. House members, including Illinois Rep. Mary Miller, who signed a letter to that effect in March. Their letter was ignored. Even in Alabama, where a court initially interpreted that state’s abortion ban as an IVF prohibition, state lawmakers promptly acted to override the ruling. Eighty-two percent of Americans support IVF, according to a recent Gallup poll, and crossing them would be political suicide for any party in any state.

In truth, both the Democratic and Republican bills were subject to reasonable criticisms.

For example, the Democratic version went much further than protecting IVF, Republicans said. It included an unfunded mandate for private insurers to cover the procedure. It would have pre-empted state regulations on IVF, including use and disposal of unused embryos. Currently, regulation is left to states.

The Republican Bill was too narrow, as its critics saw it. Instead of creating a full, federal right of access to IVF, it would only have banned Medicaid reimbursements for states that did not allow access to IVF.

Neither bill had a chance of passing and no attempt is being made to reconcile the differences between the bills. That should tell you that it was all about politics. As the Associated Press put it, “The overtly political back-and-forth, with no attempt at finding a legislative compromise, showed how quickly Congress has shifted into a campaign mindset five months out from the fall election.”

But it was Duckworth who initiated the petty game, getting countless headlines, as she no doubt intended, like NBC’s: “Senate Republicans block IVF protection bill.” Republicans had no choice but to respond to the non-issue.

Stunts aren’t new to Duckworth. In 2016 she was among a group of about a dozen Democrats who plunged the House into “pandemonium,” as the New York Times put it, in a sit-in on the House floor demanding gun control legislation. In the unprecedented sit-in, “There were scenes of chaos across the floor as Republicans tried to resume regular business,” the Times wrote. Duckworth, a disabled vet, made sure to remove her prosthetic legs for the event, supposedly to have a place to hide her cell phone, though it sure looked good for the pictures, like the one here. And so much for equal enforcement of the crime of obstruction of an official proceeding,  which is being broadly asserted against January 6 defendants.

Senator Duckworth, how about focusing on actual problems like inflation, the open border and rampant crime?

*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.