Senate IVF bill fails again to advance on mostly party line vote

The Senate on Tuesday failed for a second time to advance an in vitro fertilization (IVF) protection bill by a vote of 51-44.

The legislation needed 60 votes to advance. Republican Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, voted in favor of the bill along with all Democrats.

The legislation was largely dismissed by Republicans as a political stunt meant to drum up support for vulnerable Democrats.

"Republicans support IVF. Full stop. No question about that," Republican Whip John Thune said during a news conference shortly before the vote. "This is not an attempt to make law. This is not an attempt to get an outcome or to legislate. This is simply an attempt by Democrats to try to create a political issue where there isn't one."

Collins and Murkowski voted for Illinois Democrat Tammy Duckworth's Right to IVF Act when it failed to advance in June. But as reproductive rights continue to be a flashpoint in the upcoming election, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer dared Republicans to block the bill again.

"If the Senate votes no today and strikes IVF protections down yet again, it will be further proof that Project 2025 is alive and well," Schumer said on the Senate floor earlier Tuesday. "Remember Donald Trump's Project 2025 is tied to the Heritage Foundation, one of the most important and extreme conservative think tanks in the country, and earlier this year, they came out fiercely against today's bill protecting IVF."

The vote came after Trump on the campaign trail reaffirmed his support for IVF.

During a town hall in August, Trump said he and his team had been exploring ways to help those wanting in vitro fertilization.

"I've been looking at it, and what we're going to do is for people that are using IVF, which is fertilization … the government is going to pay for it, or we're going to get -- we'll mandate your insurance company to pay for it, which is going to be great. We’re going to do that," Trump said then.

Then, during his Sept. 10 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump said he has "been a leader on IVF."

In response, Schumer said he'd again bring the bill to the floor for a vote to give Republicans another chance to support it. It would need 60 votes to advance.

"We have seen the Republican Party’s nominee for president claim to be “a leader in fertilization” and come out in support of expanding access to IVF by requiring insurance companies to cover IVF treatment -- a key provision included in the Right to IVF Act," Schumer wrote in a letter to his colleagues on Sunday. "So, we are going to give our Republican colleagues another chance to show the American people where they stand."

"So to my Republican colleagues today, you get a second chance to either stand with families struggling with infertility or stand with Project 2025, which aims to make reproductive freedoms extinct," Schumer said.

The Right to IVF Act combines several Democratic bills. It establishes a nationwide right for access to IVF, expands fertility treatments for veterans, and seeks to increase affordability for fertility care.

Efforts to advance this bill accelerated over the summer after an Alabama Supreme Court ruling that embryos are children, which temporarily upended IVF access in the state.

But Republicans, who say they support IVF and note it is not currently illegal to access it in any state, criticized the bill before the vote in June, calling it a political stunt and opposing the legislation as being an overreach.

Before the vote, Republicans attempted to unanimously pass a separate piece of IVF legislation. That bill, sponsored by Sens. Katie Britt, R-Ala., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, would have prohibited states from receiving Medicare funding if they banned access to IVF.

Their bill was blocked from advancing by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who said the GOP offer was inadequate.

“I have been perfectly clear about the glaring issue with this Republican bill,” Murray said on the Senate floor. “The cold hard reality is that 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."