Republicans Ted Cruz And Katie Britt Introduce Another Bill To Protect IVF

Republican Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Katie Britt (Ala.) on Monday introduced legislation to protect in vitro fertilization, months after a controversial Alabama Supreme Court ruling that led providers to halt the fertility procedure.

The IVF Protection Act seeks to protect IVF nationwide by barring states from receiving Medicaid funding if they implement a ban on the fertility treatment. The bill defines IVF as a procedure where “eggs are collected from ovaries and manually fertilized by sperm for later placement inside of a uterus.” The legislation states that it does not stop states from enacting health and safety protocols within IVF clinics.

“What Katie and I have done is we’ve introduced straightforward federal legislation to protect IVF, to create a federal right to IVF, which means no state can ban it,” Cruz said on “Fox & Friends” Monday morning.

“Every senator says they support IVF,” he added. “This should be an example where — look, there are issues we’re going to disagree on — but we should be able to come together, 100 to nothing, and say, ‘We stand with the ability of parents who want to love their kids to bring those children into the world.’”

After the Alabama ruling earlier this year, which effectively defined embryos as children, many Republicans floundered to find the right messaging on IVF.

In February, Senate Republicans blocked a bill to protect IVF . Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) introduced the Access to Family Building Act, which would have established a statutory right to IVF and other fertility treatments, as well as given physicians the right to provide fertility care without the fear of prosecution. The bill would also have allowed insurance companies to cover the cost of fertility