Fox News host Shannon Bream confronted Senator Katie Britt, an Alabama Republican, on Sunday about her voting against a bill that would federally protect access to in vitro fertilization (IVF).
Republicans once again struck down the bill, sponsored by Senator Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat, last week as the issue of reproductive rights stays a top issue for voters heading into November’s election.
Democrats have pushed to establish protections for reproductive health procedures following the Supreme Court‘s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, which ended the constitutional right to an abortion. Last week’s bill would have protected access to IVF and required that insurance companies cover the procedure and other fertility treatments.
Senators voted 51-44, meaning that the measure failed to meet the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome a filibuster. Two Republicans, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Senator Susan Collins of Maine, joined Democrats in supporting the bill.
In an interview on Fox News Sunday, Bream asked Britt about her voting against this measure, “So you voted against a measure though that was offered up by Democrats on IVF in the Senate there and they continue to point to that to say that Republicans aren’t supportive of protecting IVF, why did you vote no?”
Britt, a supporter of former President Donald Trump, took aim at Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer as she claimed the bill was a “show vote,” adding that he should have put other funding bills on the floor instead.
“This is politics at its worst. If you think about what Chuck Schumer is doing instead of putting funding bills on the floor that are so critically important to actually doing our job for the American people…instead of putting any of those bills on the floor he chose to put an IVF bill on the floor for a show vote. That bill extended into human cloning. That bill did not protect religious freedom, something we have agreed is a bipartisan issue,” Britt responded.
The senator added: “There has been probably no more vocal supporter outside of [former] President Trump than myself when it comes to making sure we have nationwide access to IVF. It was simply a show vote, it was never intended to pass.”
Newsweek has reached out to Britt and Schumer’s office via email for comment.
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However, Schumer has continued to advocate for protections for IVF, warning that it had “become the next target of ultraconservatives.”
“Sadly, access to IVF can no longer be taken for granted. From the moment the MAGA Supreme Court eliminated [Roe v. Wade], the hard right made clear that they would keep going,” Schumer said on the Senate floor last week. “As we saw earlier this year in Alabama, IVF has become the next target of ultraconservatives, and access to this incredible treatment is more vulnerable than ever.”
IVF came into the spotlight when Alabama’s Supreme Court ruled in February that frozen embryos are considered children under the state’s constitution, which put IVF at risk leading to warnings about the potential impact on fertility treatments and the freezing of embryos and causing some fertility clinics in the state to stop treatments. Alabama lawmakers passed a bill to protect IVF access less than a month later.
This comes as Trump has said that he supports IVF protections and has pledged to make the procedure free for all Americans if he’s elected president this November.
“I have been a leader on IVF, which is fertilization,” he said during a debate against Vice President Kamala Harris. “I’ve been a leader on it. They know that and everybody else knows it.”
However, during the debate, Harris underscored Trump’s role in the Supreme Court‘s overturning of the national right to abortion two years ago, saying that bans enacted since then were delaying families’ access to IVF treatments. Abortion is also a central issue in November’s election, with Democrats warning that Trump would push forward with restrictions on reproductive health care if he wins a second term.
Trump has sought to deflect such attacks and appear more moderate on abortion, warning that extreme stances could cost Republicans at the ballot box even as he has repeatedly taken credit for appointing the three Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe. That decision resulted in abortion restrictions across Republican-led states, including proposals that threatened access to IVF.
Britt’s remarks come after she and Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, had pushed to pass an alternative bill that would have made states ineligible to receive Medicaid funding if they ban access to IVF, although that measure was blocked by Democrats.
Cruz said from the Senate floor last week that he is an “unequivocal supporter of protecting IVF” but that the bill being pushed by Democrats was “to stoke baseless fears about IVF and push their broader political agenda.”
However, Democrats said that Cruz and Britt’s bill did not go far enough to protect IVF, including failing to protect against “fetal personhood” legislation.
A similar bill seeking to protect IVF was also shot down by Republicans in the Senate in June. Trump’s running mate Senator JD Vance of Ohio voted against the measure at the time.
