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In a less-than-shocking turn of events on Tuesday, all but two Republicans in the Senate — Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins — voted against bills that would protect the right to IVF on a federal level, require insurance companies to cover the procedure, and require the Defense department to provide certain service members and veterans with fertility treatment and counseling. If that sounds like a very familiar sentence, that would be because it’s the second time they’ve done so this year.
Now, you may be wondering why, given how much they swear they are not out to get IVF, they voted against the bill. Or why JD Vance, who swears he’s not against the procedure either, skipped the vote.
Well … JD Vance will tell you why!
“I think we have to be careful here because the Senate did not block an IVF bill. The Senate blocked a ridiculous show vote bill that had no chance of passing,” Vance explained after a reporter asked him why he thought the bill was voted down.
And why would it have no chance of passing? Oh, that’s right. Because the Republicans who didn’t vote for it wouldn’t vote for it. If they did vote for it, it would pass.
Why is it a “show vote”? Because Republicans won’t vote for it but they’re mad that they now have to be on record as not voting for it, so that voters can see that they wouldn’t vote for it. So rude!
Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama did offer one explanation beyond “I didn’t vote for it because I wouldn’t vote for it,” stating she wouldn’t vote for the Democrats’ bill because she thought it would force religious people who oppose the procedure to provide IVF treatments against their will.
Though one would have to wonder what the hell those people were doing working in an IVF clinic in the first place.
The Right to IVF Act included updated and enhanced versions of several other IVF-related pieces of legislation that Democrats have tried to pass and Republicans have blocked — Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s Access to Family Building Act and Family Building FEHB Fairness Act, Sen. Patty Murray’s Veteran Families Health Services Act, and Sen. Cory Booker’s Access to Infertility Treatment and Care Act.
“Today’s vote was Senate Republicans’ chance to put their vote where their mouths are — but instead, their true policy beliefs, hypocrisy and misogyny showed through,” Duckworth said in a statement. “By blocking my Right to IVF Act for the second time in just a few months, Republicans proved that when the rubber meets the road they will do anything to get out of actually passing legislation that would protect women’s right to access reproductive care. On behalf of every woman who has faced the heart-shattering struggle of infertility, all I can say to my Republican colleagues is: Shame on you.”
To be fair, Republicans did try to have an IVF “show vote” of their own. Sens. Ted Cruz and Katie Britt asked the Senate to just go ahead and pass their IVF bill by unanimous consent. However, unlike Republicans, most of whom couldn’t explain why they wouldn’t vote for the Democratic bill beyond “it’s a show vote and we don’t wanna,” Democrats were perfectly capable of explaining why Cruz and Britt’s bill was terrible.
Instead of providing actual federal protection for the procedure, you see, Cruz and Britt’s bill would have just barred states from receiving Medicaid funding if they ban IVF, which Duckworth noted would actually be an incentive for some red states who don’t want either.
“I have been perfectly clear about the glaring issue with this Republican bill,” Sen. Patty Murray explained. “The cold, hard reality is this Republican bill does nothing to meaningfully protect IVF from the biggest threats from lawmakers and anti-abortion extremists all over this country. It would still allow states to regulate IVF out of existence. And this bill is silent on fetal personhood, which is the biggest threat to IVF.”
Exactly, because Republicans are not going to come right out with explicit bills to ban IVF, at least not in droves … but they absolutely will try to pass fetal/embryonic personhood bills that would make the procedure illegal.
All Democrats needed to get their IVF protection bill passed was for nine more Republicans to vote for it. Nine! And they couldn’t get it together to do that or to coherently explain why they wouldn’t.
That certainly does not bode well for ensuring access to the procedure under a Trump/Vance administration now does it?
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
