And the media are fueling the fearmongering.
And the media are fueling the fearmongering.
T he Left loves to insinuate that Republicans want to ban IVF. On Tuesday, CNN host Kaitlan Collins implied as much while interviewing Senator Tom Cotton — and she didn’t get away with it. The senator and Collins shared a heated exchange while discussing the Democrats’ failed IVF bill. (The full interview is available here.)
The interview started off like this:
Collins: You and your fellow Senate Republicans mostly voted against [the Democrats’ IVF bill], arguing that it’s a show vote. But Donald Trump, as you know, recently pledged to either have insurance companies or the government pay for fertility treatments. So would you have voted for a bill like this if he was in office?
Cotton: Well, Kaitlan, first off I have to correct almost everything you said in the lead in there — almost none of which was accurate about this bill. First off, there’s no risk to IVF in this country. All 49 Republican Senators, along with President Trump, support IVF. No State restricts or bans IVF. Second —
Collins: [interjects] I didn’t say that in the intro, but okay, go ahead.
Cotton: — this bill was about a lot more than just IVF. You said that it had to guarantee access. Access is guaranteed in all 50 states right now. You also said that it was about IVF. It was about a lot more than IVF. This bill would mandate coverage for experimental, controversial procedures like cloning or gene-editing or providing fertility treatments to men who think they’re women — whatever that means.
Throughout the interview, Collins referenced the Alabama supreme-court case which granted parents the right to sue fertility clinics for maltreatment of their embryos because of a preexisting state law on the legal status of embryos. She insinuated that the case was a prime example of how Republicans are trying to limit IVF access, which is simply false. (I guess she never read my article about the Alabama case — sad!)
In the interview, a clearly exasperated Senator Cotton had to explain to Collins how the legislative process works:
Cotton: Well, Kaitlan, again, IVF is not at risk in any state, and the Alabama example proves the point. The legislature acted promptly to change what was an old law to ensure access to —
Collins: [interjects] Why did they have to act if it wasn’t in peril, senator?
Cotton: I — because of a Supreme Court decision, that happens all the time —
Collins: — that imperiled access to IVF.
Cotton: Courts make decisions — what? Kaitlan. Courts make decisions interpreting laws — often old laws that haven’t been updated to reflect change circumstances — all the time, and legislators come back and they change those laws. That’s what happened here.
Collins — who conducted most of the interview with a smirk — also failed to note that the Democrats shot down a Republican-backed bill on Tuesday that would have, to use Collins’s turn of phrase, “guaranteed access to IVF.” The IVF Protection Act, which was introduced by Senators Katie Britt (R., Ala.) and Ted Cruz (R., Texas) in May, failed to pass for the second time Tuesday.
Senator Britt said on the floor Tuesday, “Our bill is the only bill that protects IVF access while safeguarding religious liberty. It also could get 60 votes in the United States Senate, and isn’t that the point? Yet, we’re going to have a show-vote [on the Democrats’ bill].”
A quick look at both IVF bills will reveal that Britt is correct — her bill is only three pages long, whereas the Democrats’ bill is 30. Britt’s bill would mandate that states not prohibit IVF if they are to receive federal Medicaid funding. The Democrats’ bill, the Right to IVF Act, would mandate a slew of progressive agenda items, under the guise of “protecting” IVF. Again, as Cotton noted, no states are currently trying to prohibit IVF, but such a federal law would quell any lingering doubts and remove IVF fearmongering from the Left’s ammunition pile once and for all.
Like Collins at CNN, other mainstream-media outlets described the Democrats’ bill as a noble effort to ensure Americans have access to fertility treatments. Reuters said the bill was “aimed at enshrining federal protections and expanding insurance coverage for fertility treatments.” The Daily Mail wrote that “GOP senators on Tuesday tanked a bill protecting access to in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and other fertility treatments.” NPR said “Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic bill to provide a nationwide right to IVF treatments.” The AP used similar language, blaming Republicans for blocking legislation that would “establish a nationwide right to in vitro fertilization.”
For one, the bill would grant both individuals and health-care providers the “right” to destroy embryos and conduct discriminatory genetic testing of embryos.
Under Section 104, the bill states that an individual has a right to “make decisions and arrangements regarding the donation, testing, use, storage, or disposition of reproductive genetic material, such as oocytes, sperm, fertilized eggs, and embryos,” and that health-care providers have a right to “provide for, or assist with, the testing, use, storage, or disposition of reproductive genetic material, such as oocytes, sperm, fertilized eggs, and embryos, in accordance with widely accepted and evidence-based medical standards of care.”
In other words, according to the text of the bill, both individuals and health-care providers would have a “right” to destroy embryos should they so choose (the bill uses the polite term “disposition” instead of “destruction”).
Also in Section 104, the bill expands the definition of “fertility treatment” to include the “genetic testing of embryos” and “such other information, referrals, treatments, procedures, medications, laboratory testing, technologies, and services relating to fertility as the Secretary determines appropriate.” Cotton was therefore not speaking hyperbolically when he said that “this bill would mandate coverage for experimental, controversial procedures like cloning or gene editing.”
While there is nothing wrong with genetic testing in general, problems arise regarding the purpose of genetic testing. In almost all cases of preimplantation genetic testing (PGT), embryos are genetically tested so that IVF clients can choose their “favorite” ones. (The potential for eugenicist embryonic selection is why countries such as Germany, Denmark, France, and Sweden ban genetic testing in the context of fertility treatments, unless the parents have a predisposition to a serious genetic illness.)
The bill also requires insurance companies and the government — and, effectively, any clients or taxpayers thereof, regardless of their religious convictions — to pay for an open-ended list of procedures and treatments somehow related to reproductivity. Ultimately, the bill authorizes a left-wing medical society to decide what should be on that list.
Under the section titled “Fertility Treatment Rights,” the bill states that “an individual has a statutory right under this title” to “receive fertility treatment from a health care provider, in accordance with widely accepted and evidence-based medical standards of care.”
Sounds innocuous, right? Wrong.
In Section 103, the bill punts all further guidelines regarding medical standards of care to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM). The ASRM — which espouses “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” as one of its core values — is a proudly left-wing organization. The society recently published a guide titled “Inclusive Language and Environment to Welcome Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, and Asexual+ Patients.”
The ASRM then provides a list of definitions of LGBTQIA+ terminology as a practice guide, with an additional column providing the “context” for the terms. For example, ASRM provided this helpful context to its definition of “Sex/Sex assigned at birth”:
Sex is generally thought to be binary (male/female) vs. intersex. Terms to describe individuals by their sex assigned at birth include ‘‘assigned female at birth’’ or ‘‘AFAB’’ and ‘‘assigned male at birth’’ or ‘‘AMAB.’’
Further down their list of terms, ASRM defined “Gender Binary” as the “classification of gender into two distinct and opposite categories, man or woman,” noting that “it is widely used concept [sic] in society but is oppressive to people who do not feel they completely fall into one of the two categories.”
In the same report, the ASRM chides clinics that use the phrase “women’s health” or reference fertility care “for couples,” because such language “may have the unintended consequence of causing discomfort for people who do not feel they fit into those categories.”
In other words, Cotton was not speaking polemically when he stated that the Right to IVF Act would mandate “providing fertility treatments to men who think they’re women — whatever that means.” The bill gives authority to the ASRM — an organization that calls the gender binary “oppressive” and demands the usage of “AFAB” or “AMAB” instead of “woman” or “man” — to determine what qualifies as “widely accepted and evidence-based medical standards of care.”
In short, the Democrats’ Right to IVF act would not merely “protect access to in-vitro fertilization” if passed. Instead, the bill is a Trojan horse for several Democratic priorities, masked in legalese. If Democrats are serious about “guaranteeing access to IVF,” they should vote for the Republican-backed IVF Protection Act.