Senate Democrats push to protect IVF access after Alabama supreme court ruling curbing care
Senate Democrats will seek passage of legislation to protect access to in vitro fertilization (IVF) care, after Alabama’s supreme court earlier this month determined that embryos used in the procedure are “children” and providers in the state stopped seeing patients.
In a speech at the Capitol, Illinois’s Democratic senator Tammy Duckworth spoke of her own experience with using IVF to start a family.
“My infertility would become one of the most heartbreaking struggles of my life, my miscarriage more painful than any wound I ever earned on the battlefield,” said Duckworth, who lost both of her legs while serving with the US army in Iraq.
“So, it’s a little personal to me when a majority male court suggests that people like me, who are not able to have kids without the help of modern medicine, should be in jail cells and not taking care of their babies in nurseries.”
She went on to blame Republicans who orchestrated the overturning of Roe v Wade for the ruling against IVF:
I know I’m not alone when I struggled to understand how politicians who support this kind of policy can possibly call themselves pro- life. After Roe v Wade was overturned, actually, even before then, when Donald Trump promised to only appoint justices who would overturn it, I warned that red states would come for IVF, and now they have. But they aren’t going to stop in Alabama. Mark my words: if we don’t act now, it will only get worse.
Duckworth said she will tomorrow ask the Senate to pass the Access to Family Building Act, which will protect IVF care, by unanimous consent – meaning all senators must agree. It’s unclear if it has the support to pass.
Key events
‘We’re going to prevent a shutdown,’ Republican House speaker Johnson says
As he departed the Capitol to meet with Joe Biden and other leaders of Congress at the White House, Republican House speaker Mike Johnson signaled to Fox News that he was looking to forge an agreement with Democrats to prevent a government shutdown:
In addition to Democrats, Johnson will also need to placate Republican lawmakers who want him to cut government spending and use the budget negotiations to take a hard line against Biden’s policies.
The fallout from Alabama’s supreme court ruling against IVF has reached neighboring Florida, where the Republican-dominated state legislature is delaying its push to pass a “fetal personhood” bill, the Guardian Gloria Oladipo reports:
Florida lawmakers have postponed a bill that would give fetuses civil rights after a similar ruling in Alabama has halted in vitro fertilization treatment at several clinics in the state.
The “fetal personhood” bill had been gaining support amid Florida’s mostly Republican lawmakers. The legislation attempts to define a fetus as an “unborn child”, allowing parents to collect financial damages in the case of wrongful death, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
But the bill has largely stalled after Democrats argued that the legislation could affect in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments, as seen in Alabama after the state’s supreme court ruled earlier this month that embryos created through IVF are considered “extrauterine children”. Since the ruling, several Alabama IVF clinics have paused services.
The Florida state representative Dotie Joseph, a Democrat, told the Washington Post that the bill’s language did not protect IVF treatment from being affected.
“We are exposing the healthcare provider to liability if something goes wrong,” Joseph said. “You have a situation where you are creating a chilling effect for people who are proactively trying to have a baby.”
ABC News caught up with Alabama’s Republican senator Tommy Tuberville to hear his latest thoughts on the state supreme court decision restricting IVF care in the state.
Tuberville opposes abortion, but last week struggled to articulate his position on the separate question of whether he supports in vitro fertilization. This morning, he appeared to signal that he supports the care, and noted that the state legislature is moving to pass legislation to ensure its access in Alabama.
Here’s more from ABC:
After contradicting himself, Sen. Tuberville says Alabama will pass a bill to protect IVF saying “it’s gonna be ok”
But for some women it’s far from ok.
We asked about Kimberly, a woman I spoke to —she had her fourth & final embryo transfer scheduled for today.
It’s canceled. pic.twitter.com/jdJsggOZXi
— Rachel Scott (@rachelvscott) February 27, 2024
Speaking after Tammy Duckworth was Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s Democratic leader, who argued that Donald Trump’s appointment of conservative justices to the supreme court set the stage for the Alabama ruling against IVF.
Democrats have performed well in state-level and special elections ever since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, a decision supported by the three justices Trump nominated for the court. Here’s what Schumer had to say about the connection between that decision and the ruling earlier this month in Alabama:
This didn’t happen in a vacuum. What happened in Alabama, make no mistake about it, is a direct consequence of the hard-right Maga supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade. And, as sure as we’re standing here, there are going to be other awful decisions that emanate from this overturning of Roe v Wade, in the future. Thanks to Maga extremism, and the hard-right judges, the extremist judges that former President Trump and the Republican Senate put on the courts, today the United States is an embarrassment to the world when it comes to reproductive freedom.
Senate Democrats push to protect IVF access after Alabama supreme court ruling curbing care
Senate Democrats will seek passage of legislation to protect access to in vitro fertilization (IVF) care, after Alabama’s supreme court earlier this month determined that embryos used in the procedure are “children” and providers in the state stopped seeing patients.
In a speech at the Capitol, Illinois’s Democratic senator Tammy Duckworth spoke of her own experience with using IVF to start a family.
“My infertility would become one of the most heartbreaking struggles of my life, my miscarriage more painful than any wound I ever earned on the battlefield,” said Duckworth, who lost both of her legs while serving with the US army in Iraq.
“So, it’s a little personal to me when a majority male court suggests that people like me, who are not able to have kids without the help of modern medicine, should be in jail cells and not taking care of their babies in nurseries.”
She went on to blame Republicans who orchestrated the overturning of Roe v Wade for the ruling against IVF:
I know I’m not alone when I struggled to understand how politicians who support this kind of policy can possibly call themselves pro- life. After Roe v Wade was overturned, actually, even before then, when Donald Trump promised to only appoint justices who would overturn it, I warned that red states would come for IVF, and now they have. But they aren’t going to stop in Alabama. Mark my words: if we don’t act now, it will only get worse.
Duckworth said she will tomorrow ask the Senate to pass the Access to Family Building Act, which will protect IVF care, by unanimous consent – meaning all senators must agree. It’s unclear if it has the support to pass.
Punchbowl News this morning published a rundown of where Congress’s leaders are when it comes to the government funding debate, which offers some interesting details of the potential winners and losers, should a shutdown occur.
Perhaps most interesting was their observation about Mike Johnson, who was elevated to House speaker in the wake of Kevin McCarthy’s unprecedented ouster, but doesn’t have much experience with negotiating government funding, and has perhaps the most to lose:
Johnson has never been part of a high-stakes negotiation. He’s drawn illogical lines in the sand – no more CRs – and then had to back down. He’s refused to take positions on big issues. Other top House Republicans are growing tired of him and have no faith in his leadership.
But we’re beginning to see Johnson edge closer to reality. He told House Republicans on a conference call Friday that the compromise he’s negotiating with the rest of the Big Four doesn’t include any major policy wins for the GOP. That’s true.
…
Johnson is going to have a choice to make soon. He can put the compromise bill or package on the floor and pass it with Democratic votes under suspension of the rules, a move that could cost him his job. He can pass another stopgap bill to avert a shutdown. Or Johnson can allow the government to shut down, which also may cost him his job.
Joe Biden convened the meeting of Congress’s leaders at the White House, but according to Punchbowl, he could be the main beneficiary if the government actually shut down:
Sagging in the polls with his political future murky as ever, Biden would be the clear winner of a funding lapse. Biden is trying to make the case that Republicans, with former President Donald Trump as their likely nominee, can’t govern. A shutdown would help that case.
Rightwing House Freedom Caucus decries government funding negotiations
As is always the case, just because Congress’s leaders reach a deal doesn’t mean all of their lawmakers will support it – a fact that may be particularly important in the House of Representatives, which the GOP controls by just two seats.
There is no indication that Republican speaker Mike Johnson sees a government shutdown as advantageous, but should a deal be agreed, he may run into trouble with his party’s most conservative members. On X, Chip Roy, a Texas lawmaker and member of the rightwing House Freedom Caucus, accused Johnson’s team of having “NO PLAN TO FIGHT” for aggressive government spending cuts that Democrats, who control the Senate, would probably never agree to.
It’s unclear at this point how much of a problem Roy and his counterparts’ opposition could pose, since government funding bills are typically compromises that attract votes from both parties. Here’s the start of Roy’s lengthy thread of objections:
THREAD – The @HouseGOP promised to secure the border & to cut funding to Biden’s radical progressive Democrat agenda… this week, gov’t funding partially expires. WHAT’S THE STATUS? Short Answer: NO PLAN TO FIGHT. Here’s the longer form status update: (1/x) #NoSecurityNoFunding
— Chip Roy (@chiproytx) February 26, 2024
Biden to meet with congressional leaders as government shutdown looms once again
Good morning, US politics blog readers. We find ourselves at a familiar place: a government shutdown is looming, and a Congress riven with divisions over how to spend Washington’s money is struggling to pass legislation to head it off. This time is a little different from the many similar instances that came before, in that it would be a partial government shutdown, with the legislation funding departments including agriculture, transportation and veteran affairs expiring on Friday, while the deadline for the rest is 8 March. But that hasn’t changed the fact that a shutdown of any length or breadth is something Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress apparently don’t want to see happen, and this morning, Joe Biden is getting personally involved. He has invited Congress’s leaders – Republican speaker of the House Mike Johnson, Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, the Senate’s Democratic majority leader Chuck Schumer and Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell – to the White House to see if they can’t sort it out. They meet at 11.30am ET.
Here’s what else is going on today:
-
Michigan voters are casting ballots in their state’s primary. It’ll probably be another romp for Donald Trump, who on Saturday evening crushed former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley on her home turf. Perhaps the bigger question is how many people in the state with a large Arab-American population will vote “uncommitted” in the Democratic primary in protest of Biden’s support for Israel.
-
Julie Su, Biden’s beleaguered appointee to head the labor department, will testify before the Senate health and education committee at 12.30pm. She’s in the role in an acting capacity, since there’s not yet enough support in the Senate for her confirmation.
-
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre meets the press at 2pm, and may elaborate on how Biden’s meeting with congressional leaders went.
