Sen. Tammy Duckworth, whose daughters were born through IVF, pushes to safeguard access to IVF nationwide

WASHINGTON — Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., whose two daughters are the product of in vitro fertilization, has emerged as the Democrat leading the charge for federal safeguards for women seeking access to the procedure after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children.

As a result, several fertility clinics in Alabama closed, concerned about criminal prosecutions over the handling of embryos.

That sparked Duckworth’s push Wednesday for a Senate vote to quickly secure legal protections for IVF and other fertility treatments. The bid to fast track the legislation failed because it takes unanimous consent to speed up handling of bills, and one Republican, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, objected.

Duckworth’s aim is to put Republicans on notice — for saying they support IVF but won’t do anything to guarantee rights for what Duckworth calls in her legislation “reproductive technology.”

The measure would shield doctors and insurance companies from criminal charges.

The Alabama ruling comes as President Joe Biden’s bid for a second term — and multiple congressional campaigns — have made reproductive rights a central issue in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning the federal constitutional right to abortion in the U.S. The reversal came because of the votes of justices named to the court by ex-President Donald Trump.

The Alabama ruling stranded women — no matter their politics — who had been preparing to receive their fertilized embryos.

Since the Alabama ruling, Duckworth has been sharing her personal story in several high-profile TV appearances and a news conference Tuesday in the Capitol of being an older woman and wounded Iraq war vet trying to get pregnant. Duckworth will be 56 in March, and her daughters, Abigail and Maile, were born in 2014 and 2018. She was the first sitting senator to give birth while in office.

“My girls are my everything,” Duckworth said in her Senate floor speech. “But they likely would’ve never even been born if I hadn’t had access to the basic reproductive rights that Americans — up until recently — had been depending on for nearly a half a century. Because after a decade struggling with infertility after serving in Iraq, I was only able to get pregnant through the miracle of IVF.

“IVF made our family. It made my heart whole. It made my life full. But for countless women in Alabama, that desperately sought-after dream of becoming a mom just became so much harder. Last week, that state’s Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos created through IVF should be considered children under state law, a ruling that paints women like me and our doctors as criminals. And one that throws IVF access into chaos as countless women and doctors try to figure out whether they might be criminalized for simply trying to create a family.

“If you’re thinking that this makes no sense, you’re right. You’re not misunderstanding anything. You’re not missing something.

“It’s the nightmarish blend of hypocrisy and misogyny that you think it is: The very people who claim to be ‘defending family values’ are the ones trying to enact dystopian policies that would prevent Americans from starting their own families. This is no longer a hypothetical worst-case scenario.”

She added, “So it’s a little personal when a majority male state Supreme Court suggests that people like me who became parents with the help of modern medicine should be in jail cells and not nurseries.”

Duckworth — worried about access to IVF after Roe v. Wade was overturned, tried to pass this in December 2022, but Hyde-Smith blocked it then too.

On Wednesday, Hyde-Smith said she objected to “genetic engineering.”

“The bill before us today is a vast overreach that is full of poison pills that go way too far,” she said. “Far beyond ensuring legal access to IVF, the act explicitly waives the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and would subject religious and pro-life organizations to crippling lawsuits.”

Duckworth’s next step on this is not clear. She is considering her options to hold Republicans’ feet to the fire when it comes to IVF.