Vice-presidential hopeful Tim Walz and his wife, Gwen, “would never have become” parents if President Donald Trump had his way, Gwen recently said on a Democratic fundraising call. The implication was that Trump and his running mate, J. D. Vance, don’t support fertility treatments such as in vitro fertilization (a false implication; both men have expressed support for IVF).
It was after seeing “extreme attacks on reproductive health care across the country,” such as the Alabama court case that ruled embryos qualify as children, that “Tim and I agreed that it was time to formally speak out about our experience,” Gwen told Glamour. The couple has in the past been candid about their fertility struggle. In July, Tim said, “Thank God for IVF, my wife and I have two beautiful children.” Tim also told rally-goers in Arizona earlier this month that “this one’s personal for me about IVF and reproductive care. When we wanted to have children, we went through years of fertility treatment.”
The Walzes just clarified, however, that Gwen went through intrauterine insemination (IUI), a process that is much less contentious than IVF. IUI is “a fertility treatment that gives sperm a better chance at fertilizing an egg,” whereas IVF involves the creation of multiple fertilized embryos in a lab. When asked about the inconsistency, campaign spokeswoman Mia Ehrenberg said: “Governor Walz talks how normal people talk. He was using commonly understood shorthand for fertility treatments.” A charitable explanation is that Walz felt the need to dumb down the specific fertility treatment his wife received; IVF is, to be fair, a more commonly heard term than IUI, but it is still a misclassification.
A couple’s fertility struggle is a deeply personal anecdote to use as a fundraising tactic — one that would be too personal to criticize, if not for the fact that the Walzes misrepresented it.