Democratic Congressional Candidate in Michigan to Air First I.V.F. Ad of Election Cycle

Voters in Michigan on Friday will see the first television advertisement of the campaign cycle featuring a Democratic candidate for Congress talking about her experience using I.V.F. to start a family.

The spot provides a glimpse of how Democrats plan to make the issue of access to fertility treatments, and reproductive health care overall, central to campaigns across the country after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos should be considered children.

In the ad, Jessica Swartz, an attorney who is challenging the Republican Representative Bill Huizenga in southwest Michigan, speaks directly to the camera about her struggle getting pregnant.

“We wanted to start a family more than anything,” Ms. Swartz says in the ad, which shows her sitting on a couch with her husband and flipping through their wedding photo album. “But like millions of Americans, we struggled.”

“I.V.F. was an answer to our prayers,” she adds, claiming that Mr. Huizenga “wants to roll back our freedoms.”

Ms. Swartz is running in a solidly Republican district, but the issue is expected to resonate in Michigan. In 2022, voters there passed a proposal that created a state constitutional right to reproductive freedom, including decisions “about all matters relating to pregnancy,” such as abortion and contraception. Governor Gretchen Whitmer has made the fight for abortion rights central to her political identity.

In Congress, Mr. Huizenga is a co-sponsor of the Life at Conception Act, a nationwide abortion ban that could severely restrict I.V.F. treatments, which typically involve the creation of several embryos, only one of which is implanted while the others are frozen to allow for subsequent attempts at a successful implantation.

Since the Alabama