policy
When Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota introduced himself to Americans in campaign speeches across the country in recent weeks, he mentioned that his family suffered from infertility, but at the identical time warned that conservatives wanted to limit artificial insemination.
“Even if we wouldn't make the same decision for ourselves, there is one golden rule: Mind your own shit,” Walz said that evening when Vice President Kamala Harris introduced him at their first joint rally in Philadelphia. “Look, that includes artificial insemination. And that is a personal matter for me and my family.”
Many have assumed that his family relied on artificial insemination to conceive their two children. Several news outlets, including the New York Times, Associated Press and Minnesota Star Tribune, have reported that the family utilized in vitro fertilization. Fertility activists also got here to this conclusion after hearing Walz speak. In April, Tim Walz's gubernatorial campaign office sent a fundraising letter in an envelope that read, “My wife and I have started a family through artificial insemination.”
When asked if the Walzes desired to share more details about their efforts to conceive a toddler, the Harris-Walz campaign team recently clarified that the couple didn’t depend on artificial insemination, but slightly on one other widely used fertility procedure called intrauterine insemination (IUI).
The treatments have one key difference: Unlike IVF, IUI neither creates nor discards embryos. That's why anti-abortion activists don't try to limit the treatment.
But for girls who’ve trouble conceiving, the procedures are sometimes intertwined. Some patients say they use “IVF” as a catch-all term for a big selection of fertility treatments. Walz said he and his wife tried to have children for seven years.
The success rate with IVF is way higher than with IUI. However, reproductive endocrinologists or fertility doctors may recommend that folks with infertility start with IUI since it is way inexpensive and fewer invasive. In each cases, patients often take hormone medications to induce or enhance ovulation. And individuals and couples who undergo the 2 procedures often undergo similar emotional journeys, where while success can bring elation, each failed attempt could be devastating.
Anyone who begins such treatment may find themselves in a world of dizzying and sometimes strange medical terminology.
In IUI, a highly concentrated sperm sample is collected and inserted into the lady's uterus using a catheter, mimicking natural conception. In IVF, multiple embryos are sometimes created within the laboratory and frozen, and people more than likely to lead to a healthy pregnancy are then transferred.
Since telling his story, Walz has typically referred to his family as having undergone “treatments like” IVF. “Governor Walz talks like normal people talk,” said Mia Ehrenberg, a spokeswoman for the campaign. “He used a common-sense shorthand for fertility treatments.”
By linking IVF to his family's experience, Walz became an influential ambassador for the Democratic Party on a difficult issue for Republican leaders, who had sought to distance themselves from efforts by influential conservative Christians to limit a well-liked procedure.
Infertility is common. According to federal data, about one in seven women on this country has trouble getting pregnant or maintaining pregnancy, and about 12% of ladies have used fertility services, which may include testing for themselves or their partners, ovulation medications, IUI, surgery to remove blockages, and IVF.
In 2022, nearly 100,000 children were born through IVF within the United States, and a Pew Research Center poll this 12 months found that a big majority of Americans view the strategy favorably.
The issue of IVF got here into the national highlight in February when the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos in test tubes must be considered children. The ruling prompted fertility clinics in Alabama to stop IVF services out of fear that patients or providers might be held legally liable if embryos were destroyed. Republican leaders like former President Donald Trump have struggled to reassure voters that they support IVF.
In the backlash that followed, Democrats realized that IVF could change into a serious campaign issue in a key election 12 months. At the time, Walz and his wife, Gwen Walz, also agreed that the governor must be more open about her own experiences, Gwen Walz said in an announcement provided to the Times by the Harris-Walz campaign team.
“Gwen and I have two beautiful children thanks to reproductive health care like IVF,” he posted on Facebook after the ruling. “Don't let these people get away with telling you they support IVF when their hand-picked judges are against it.”
In his State of the State address just a few weeks after the Alabama ruling, Tim Walz called the choice a “direct attack on my children.” On July 25, as Harris, a recent presidential contender, was considering her running mate, Walz criticized Republican vice presidential nominee and Senator JD Vance for “opposing the miracle of IVF” by voting against a bill that will have protected access to the procedure.
Barbara Collura, president of the infertility advocacy group Resolve, said she remembered Walz speaking at her organization's annual event in 2017.
At the time, Walz was the rating Democrat on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, and Collura's organization was pushing for veterans to receive broader medical insurance coverage for IVF services. She recalled knowing after the speech that Walz was “an IVF dad.” Collura said she was surprised, but not alarmed, to learn that the Walzes had undergone other fertility treatments.
In recent days, people have approached Collura about Walz, she said, adding, “Someone is actually telling their fertility story, and that means a lot to me.”
Conversations about infertility have long been largely private, leading to a scarcity of common public language and knowledge.
“I think any reproductive endocrinologist would agree: These are very sensitive issues for our patients,” said Dr. Gerard Letterie, a reproductive endocrinologist at Seattle Reproductive Medicine. “Men don't want to come forward and say, 'I have a low sperm count.' Women don't want to say, 'I need technology to get pregnant.'”
But for the reason that overturning of Roe v. Wade, discussions about reproductive health care have change into more open, with more women sharing stories of painful pregnancies, miscarriages and attempts to conceive. And Walz appears to be breaking latest ground as a vice presidential candidate by speaking out about his family's experience with infertility.
In an announcement, Gwen Walz, who worked as a highschool English teacher when the couple underwent fertility treatments within the mid-Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s, said the one one who knew intimately what they were going through was a neighbor. “She was a nurse and helped me with the shots I needed as part of the IUI process,” Walz said. “I rushed home from school and she gave me the shots to make sure we stayed on track.”
Gwen Walz described “the journey of infertility” as “despair that can eat away at the soul.”
In interviews, some advocates for people fighting infertility said they weren’t interested by the particular treatments the Walzes underwent, but saw the family as a vital voice for a big group of Americans who often suffered in private and received little understanding from most people.
“That's what politicians are trying to do,” said Briana Helgestad of Lakeville, Minn. She and her husband, Bill Helgestad, have undergone fertility treatments, including IUI and IVF, for several years. “They're trying to connect with the people who are voting.”
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