About 1.7% of women ages 15 to 49 have tried a procedure called artificial or intrauterine insemination to start a family, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Among them was the wife of Minnesota Governor Tim WalzVice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, in what she describes as an “incredibly personal and difficult experience.”
“The only person who knew in detail what we were going through was our next door neighbor. She was a nurse and helped me with the injections I needed as part of the artificial insemination process,” Gwen Walz said in a statement shared by a campaign spokesperson.
The Walzes have two children, Hope, 23, and Gus17.
The Trump campaign accused Walz of lying about start a family with another type of fertility treatment called in vitro fertilization, or IVF.
IVF has become a key campaign issue amid calls from groups like Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America for Republican-led legislatures to tighten restrictions and state laws which threatened to restrict access to this fertility treatment.
Congressional Democrats have also called for a bill banning nationwide limits on IVF to be removed from a House committee, hoping to bring it to a vote.
What did Tim Walz say about his family and IVF?
Before this week, Walz had described his wife’s fertility treatments as “like IVF.”
“Gwen and I have two beautiful children thanks to reproductive health care like IVF,” Walz wrote on Facebook after an Alabama Supreme Court ruling determined that embryos created through IVF should be considered children, potentially subjecting them to laws governing the wrongful death of a minor. “This issue is deeply personal to our family and so many others. Don’t let these guys get away with saying they support IVF when their hand-picked judges oppose it.”
Harris’ campaign team defended Walz’s suggestions that his family had undergone IVF, saying he was “using a commonly understood term for fertility treatments” and that “attacks on reproductive rights put all fertility treatments at risk.”
“The Trump campaign’s attacks on Ms. Walz are just another example of how cruel and out of touch Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are on women’s health care,” said Mia Ehrenberg, a spokeswoman for the Harris-Walz campaign.
Why are there objections to IVF but not to IUI?
Artificial insemination involves collecting sperm from the male partner, which is then cleaned and concentrated. Then, when the female partner ovulates, the doctor can introduce the sperm into the uterus using a catheter, increasing the chances of the sperm reaching the egg.
In contrast, IVF involves a number of steps involving collecting eggs from a woman and fertilizing them in the laboratory with a man’s sperm.
The Southern Baptist Convention voted earlier this year to condemn “the way IVF is routinely conducted today,” echoing calls from other groups to ban “practices that encourage couples to harvest and fertilize more eggs” than they plan to use.
“Although it does not necessarily occur in the womb, the willful destruction of fertilized embryos carried out in the typical practice of IVF is not theologically different from abortion,” the church’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission wrote.
In contrast, artificial insemination has not sparked the same outcry among some opponents of abortion rights. While the fertility treatments used in artificial insemination produce more eggs, this translates into a higher risk of multiple pregnancies – twins or more.
Religious denominations like the Missouri Lutheran Synod that have rejected other approaches like surrogacy have not opposed IUI.
“Artificial insemination is implicitly accepted, given that the sperm and egg belong to the married man and woman, but it is viewed with some skepticism because adults may be tempted to use this method instead of addressing other underlying issues,” wrote Emma Waters of the Heritage Foundation earlier this year.
How are fertility drugs used in IUI?
Fertility drugs, like those mentioned by Gwen Walz in her statement, are also commonly given in hopes of improving the chances of IUI success, either in the form of oral medications or injections.
Common options for producing this “ovarian stimulation” are either clomiphene citrate tablets or treatment using injections of hormones called gonadotropins to produce more eggs.
These injections usually work over a few days to stimulate egg growth, followed by an injection of another type of hormone to “trigger” ovulation.
Patients can prepare and inject their own shots at home, although the Food and Drug Administration approved the first premixed injection pens in 2004 as an alternative.
Why do some people choose IUI over IVF?
Artificial insemination is often a “first-line treatment option” offered by health care providers to couples struggling to conceive around the world, although success rates are lower than those of IVF. The procedure is less invasive or less expensive than IVF and is generally painless.
The average cost of IUI can be as high as $2,000 per cycle, according to the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, less than the $11,000 or $12,000 that IVF can cost. Not all states require coverage for fertility services like IUI or IVF, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
During each cycle, IUI can be successful up to 20% of the time if the procedure is done once a month, according to the National Institutes of Health.
For most couples who fail to conceive after three or four cycles of IUI, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine recommends trying IVF — although experts have suggested that IVF may be a first-line treatment for some patients.
