The broader field of infertility treatments came into the spotlight last week after Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and his wife, Gwen, announced they had children through a lesser-known procedure.
Since Vice President Kamala Harris selected Governor Walz as her running mate, she has spoken in speeches Pennsylvania, Nebraska and most recently at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois.
“Gwen and I Took Years” – Walz he said on Wednesday evening. “But we had access to fertility treatments. And when our daughter was born, we named her Hope.”
Last week, the Walzes clarified that their child was the result of intrauterine insemination, not in vitro fertilization.
IUI involves injecting sperm into the uterus. while Or just before ovulation to augment the chance of fertilization and pregnancy.
“Our fertility journey was an incredibly personal and difficult experience. Like many who have experienced these challenges, we kept it largely to ourselves at the time — not even sharing the details with our wonderful and close family,” Gwen Walz told States Newsroom in a statement. “The only person who knew the details of what we were going through was our neighbor. She was a nurse and helped me get the shots I needed as part of the IUI process.”
In vitro fertilization, eggs and sperm are combined in a lab, and the embryo is implanted into the uterus. In vitro fertilization has been drawn into national debates over reproductive rights for much of this year, and Walz has spoken about it on the campaign trail as he discusses his family’s fertility history.
Ohio U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, the Republican vice presidential candidate, accused his opponent of lying about the fact that he and his wife had children. In an Aug. 20 social media post, Vance he said“Today it came out that Tim Walz lied about having a family through IVF. Who lies about something like that?” He also shared a clip of Walz talking about infertility care and families on August 9.
In a statement, Harris-Walz campaign spokeswoman Mia Ehrenberg said: “Governor Walz talks like normal people talk. He used a commonly understood shorthand for infertility treatment.”
Experts say patients often confuse IUI and IVF or employ them interchangeably because IVF is more popular.
“Assisted reproduction involves a huge amount of literacy,” said Kimberly Mutcherson, a professor at Rutgers University in Camden who specializes in reproductive justice, bioethics, and family and health law.
Dr. Kelly Acharya, an infertility specialist and assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Duke University, said patients’ partners are more likely to confuse the two types of treatments or the rope procedure in in vitro fertilization.
“In my job, I often see people talking about other things, like egg freezing, calling it in vitro fertilization, when technically it isn’t,” she said.
Both Acharya and Mutcherson say the main differences between IUI and in vitro fertilization are the location of fertilization, cost and effectiveness.
“Intrauterine insemination, or IUI, is generally less invasive. It’s usually less expensive and is often recommended as the first thing someone tries,” Acharya said. “When someone has mild forms of infertility, such as if there are mild differences in their semen analysis or if someone is young and unsure why they’re not getting pregnant, often a doctor will recommend IUI as a first step to help things along.”
IUI is done during or just before ovulation, and Acharya says it usually takes 10 minutes and is a minor procedure. The price of IUI varies depending on insurance, from a few hundred dollars Down several thousand dollars.
Mutcherson noted that some people also confuse IUI with intracervical insemination, or ICI. During this method, sperm is inserted into the cervix — according to Karolina Fertility Institute.
Doctors often recommend ICI or IUI as a precursor to in vitro fertilization, which Mutcherson said can cost $12,000 to $15,000 per cycle — or more with genetic evaluation and testing. With in vitro fertilization, “fertilization happens outside the body,” Acharya said.
IUI, the method the Walz family used to have children, is not subject to the same scrutiny as in vitro fertilization, which has faced opposition from radical anti-abortionists. “It’s sometimes cited as less controversial than in vitro fertilization because it simply helps the natural process of introducing sperm into the uterus and then expecting fertilization to occur inside the body,” Acharya said.
Mutcherson added, however, that it may also be because it is a lesser-known procedure.
“I think the really serious problem with something like artificial insemination is that it allows people to create families that many people — unfortunately, in the Republican Party and evangelicals — don’t accept: two-mother families, two-father families, single women having children,” she said.
Price is a significant barrier to infertility care. Only 21 states require insurers to cover infertility procedures, state line reported. A successful birth through in vitro fertilization could cost more than $60,000, according to a 2022 study. test published in the journal Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology.
“In vitro fertilization requires a lot more physical, emotional and economic effort,” said Mutcherson, who got pregnant through intrauterine insemination.
In vitro fertilization became a national reproductive rights issue in February after the Alabama Supreme Court compared frozen embryos to “unborn children” in a ruling. The plaintiffs were couples who sued for damages under an 1872 wrongful death statute after their embryos were accidentally destroyed at a clinic four years ago, Alabama Spotlight reported. Fertility clinics in Alabama were temporarily closed after the ruling until Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed a bill in March protecting providers from criminal and civil liability, Reflector reported.
But there is still uncertainty over whether embryos and fetuses in the state have legal rights to “personhood.” Despite the modern law, two Alabama fertility clinics have announced I plan to close until the end of the year, but one denied that the decision was related to the judgment.
Since the Alabama ruling, polls have shown that a majority of Americans support in vitro fertilization. The survey, conducted by Pew in April, it was found that 70% said IVF was a good thing, while 22% said they were unsure and 8% said it was a bad thing. Awareness is also growing: 42% of Americans said they or someone they know has undergone infertility treatmentAccording to a 2023 Pew poll
Nationally, Republicans AND Democrats condemned the Alabama Supreme Court ruling and filed bills to protect in vitro fertilization this spring, although all have stalled in Congress. Republican Party platform support for both in vitro fertilization and the equal protection clause in the 14th Amendment was highlighted, conservative lawyers it can be argued in order to strengthen “personality of the fetus” with an effective ban on abortion. And in June, Southern Baptist Convention — the largest Protestant denomination in the United States — voted to condemn in vitro fertilization, and in particular the destruction or donation of embryos that have not been implanted in the uterus.
“People who believe that life begins at conception, people who believe that an embryo is no different than a 5-year-old sitting in kindergarten, those are the people who have really deep and abiding principles about procedures like in vitro fertilization,” Mutcherson said.
In recent years, the number of children born through assisted reproduction has increased in the United States: according to data from 2022, 2.5% of newborns were conceived thanks to infertility treatments. American Society for Reproductive Medicine. This is up from 2.3% in 2021according to federal data.
