Senate Democrats Push for Expedited Vote to Protect IVF Access

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

64% : GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway -- who was a specialist in conservative women voters before becoming a top adviser to Trump during his 2016 campaign and presidency -- shared during a December briefing with Capitol Hill Republicans that IVF is supported by 86 percent of voters, including 78 to 83 percent of those who consider themselves "pro-life" or evangelical, according a report in Politico.
63% : Duckworth is the lead sponsor of bicameral legislation called the Access to Family Building Act, which would protect access to in vitro fertilization, or IVF.
62% : Steel, who represents a swing district and built a family thanks to IVF, is also a co-sponsor of the Life at Conception Act.
60% : When The 19th reached out to the offices of all 125 Republican co-sponsors of the Life at Conception Act, only two responded.
57% : He lauded the bipartisan effort in the Alabama legislature to protect IVF treatment but did not address how the Life at Conception Act he has co-sponsored could impact access.
54% : In Congress, meanwhile, Democrats' bill that would protect IVF access nationally has received only a single Republican co-sponsor in the House and none in the Senate.Duckworth and Murray, along with Sens. Tammy Baldwin of Illinois and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, introduced the Access to Family Building Act in January.
54% : What does have significant Republican support in the House is the Life at Conception Act, a fetal personhood bill that would define a "human being" as being created from "the moment of fertilization, cloning, or other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being."
53% : "It's been incredible to watch Republicans now scramble over the weekend to suddenly support IVF -- well, many of these same Republicans are literally right now co-sponsors of legislation that would enshrine fetal personhood, the very concept that caused all of the chaos in Alabama," said Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, an original co-sponsor of Duckworth's Access to Family Building Act.
46% : In the GOP-controlled House, it is unclear if there is a path forward for the Access to Family Building Act.
42% : Nearly all experts, along with much of the anti-abortion movement, agree that without specific carveouts, personhood statutes would imperil IVF access by deeming frozen embryos human beings.
41% : The relative silence from House Republicans about the impact their fetal personhood bill would have on IVF access, along with their failure to support the Access to Family Building Act, shows the extent to which the party has painted itself into a corner on issues related to reproductive rights.
18% : The response from Republican presidential candidates was unspecific, with Nikki Haley saying she considers IVF embryos babies and Donald Trump saying he supports IVF; both oppose abortion and neither offered legislative approaches to protect the procedure.

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