EXCLUSIVE — Leading Republicans in the Senate are seeking greater clarity on in vitro fertilization as access to the treatment has become a flashpoint in reproductive health debates ahead of the 2024 election.
Led by Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee ranking member Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Republicans sent a letter on Thursday to the Department of Health and Human Services asking that it audit the safety standards of IVF and other assisted reproductive technology, or ART, clinics across the country.
The letter and Senate conflict over IVF comes after a high-profile case from Alabama in which a hospital patient wandered into the facility’s cryogenic nursery through an unsecured doorway and destroyed five embryos intended for IVF.
The Alabama Supreme Court ruled on the parents’ wrongful death case against the hospital this February, finding that embryos constitute children under the state’s unique fetal personhood laws, sparking a nationwide debate.
Although federal law requires that clinics provide their success rates to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for annual reporting, there are no federal safety standards in place that govern ART laboratory practices.
“Women expect transparency with access to accurate pregnancy success rates and the certification status of the fertility clinics they are considering,” Cassidy and the other senators wrote. “It is unclear, however, whether CDC is implementing the law in such a manner as to maximally benefit the mothers it purportedly seeks to empower.”
Cassidy, along with Sens. James Lankford (R-OK), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), and Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), highlight in the letter that there have been numerous cryogenics lab accidents that have resulted in the destruction of embryos without parental consent.
A cryogenics storage tank accident in San Francisco, California, in May 2018 resulted in the death of 3,500 embryos and eggs. A similar incident that same month in Cleveland, Ohio, resulted in the demise of 4,000 embryos and eggs.
The letter also outlines several instances of mislabeling, mixing up, or other improper handling of embryos in clinics across the country.
As of the CDC’s 2023 report, based on 2021 data, 39 of the 453 ART clinics in the United States had no accreditation with various professional societies, and 33 operating clinics did not comply with reporting requirements.
“These tragedies, and many others not detailed, all stem from avoidable errors,” the senators wrote to the HHS Office of Inspector General.
Since the Alabama IVF case, fertility treatments have become a hot-button topic in the Senate, with measures to protect IVF coming from both sides of the aisle.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), a staunch advocate of IVF, launched a bill earlier this month that would have expanded access to fertility treatments through health insurance, as well as for military members and veterans. All Republican senators except Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Susan Collins (R-ME) voted against the bill.
Similarly, however, a bill sponsored by Sens. Katie Britt (R-AL) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) that would have prohibited states from banning IVF as a condition of accepting Medicaid funds has been blocked by Democrats.
A spokesperson for Cassidy told the Washington Examiner that the ranking member on the HELP Committee supports IVF and only wants to improve security for mothers and families who invest substantially in reproductive technologies to start a family.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“Mothers in this situation make a substantial emotional, financial, and personal investment, and rightly expect that fertility clinics will protect and respect human life — and keep treasured embryos safe,” the senators wrote to HHS.
Depending on the state, a single IVF cycle can cost between $14,000 and $20,000. On average, it takes approximately two or three cycles for IVF to be effective.