Funding for to the contrary provided by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation the Park Foundation and the Charles A. Frueauff foundation.

Coming up on “To the Contrary, ” when I was going through IVF, at one point we fertilized five eggs, three of which were non-viable.

So we discarded those that very act of discarding those fertilized eggs could be construed as either manslaughter or even murder.

So that is why we wrote the Right to Build Families Act to help protect the right to IVF and other assisted reproductive technologies for all Americans.

Music Hello, I'm Bonnie Erbé Welcome to “To the Contrary, ” a discussion of news and social trends from diverse perspectives.

This week, Senator Tammy Duckworth, Democrat from Illinois, joins us to talk about the future of women's reproductive rights now that the Supreme Court has overturn Roe v Wade.

That decision may impact more than women seeking abortions and women's health care.

It could have a profound effect on In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), a procedure that has enabled millions of American couples to have babies.

Senator Duckworth has been a tireless advocate for reproductive rights for all women.

When exactly was the moment that our country decided that American women no longer had the right to bodily autonomy or were no longer capable of making decisions, good decisions about their own bodies.

This country, and those Republicans were certainly alright with me making that choice to use my body as I saw fit when I signed up to fight wars on this country's behalf.

They were just fine for me to decide to use my arms and legs to fly a Black Hawk helicopter into combat.

And no one minded and in fact honored me when I lost those limbs in defense of this great nation.

So I was competent to make those decisions about how I was going to use my body.

So my question is, when do the folks arguing anti-choice positions, arguing that we should not allow veterans reproductive health care?

When did they think I lost the competence to make decisions about my uterus that they thought I had about using my arms and legs?

Over the past year, since the Dobbs decision We have faced an onslaught of anti-choice bills that would effectively turn women into second class citizens.

The people who should feel shame are those who claim to be pro-life, yet would let a mother die in childbirth for an unviable pregnancy.

No one in the District of Columbia should have to fear facing punishment from their boss for trying to start or expand their family.

My amendment would have prohibited an employer from discriminating against an employee who uses infertility treatments.

I recently experienced the extreme joy of becoming a mother for the first time.

This miracle was not possible without the aid of In Vitro Fertilization.

And I'd be damned if I let my daughters grow up in a country that gives them fewer rights than their mom had.

Even though it is disheartening that we still need to have this debate about whether women should be in control of their own bodies, I am proud to be here with my colleagues to iterate that Democrats are not going to give up when it comes to protecting reproductive rights no matter what.

Welcome, Senator Duckworth.

It's great to see you again.

It's good to be on.

Thanks for having me.

Happy to.

I heard you in one instance, tell the story of your own attempt to have children by In Vitro, which was just the most horrible thing, I thought.

What was done to you.

Can you please tell our audience all about that, please?

Yes, So when I started when my husband and I decided we were going to try to have children.

I was in my early forties and I went to the VA because that's where I get my health care.

And every VA hospital is affiliated with a teaching university hospital.

It's why you get such great health care at the VA is because you actually have a research institution.

And my VA did not have fertility services, so they referred me.

My women's health doctor referred me to the university affiliated Medical University.

And I went to that and when I went, the fertility doctor there wouldn't even see me in the clinic.

She just came out and sat with me in the waiting room.

She pulled me aside and said, Well, you're 42.

You're too old.

There's no fertility treatments for you.

The best.

If even if you did fertility treatments, you would have a 0.5% of success.

And so just go home and enjoy your husband.

And it turned out later on when I found like several years later, when I found myself to a fertility doctor at Northwestern University after another woman, a friend of mine said, You need to go.

You need to go.

And I made it there at 44 and a half, almost 45.

The doctor said, Was it a Catholic university?

I said, Yes, it was.

Well, they opposed IVF, so she was never going to tell you that that was an available treatment.

And I just thought, how is this possible that this information was withheld from me?

The way she presented it was that there was no options for me at all, but it was because it was a Catholic university.

And they never disclosed that?

They never disclosed that.

They never said we're a Catholic institution.

The forms of IVF we could provide you would not work for you.

But there are these other options.

But you would have to go somewhere else.

They never said that.

They just said you are not you are not a candidate for IVF.

Just go home and enjoy your husband, which, by the way, my husband thought was great, but (Laughter) No, but it's kind of who needs a doctor to tell you that?

You know, it's it's not treating you with the respect you deserve.

I think it's malpractice because you didn't tell me what all my options were.

She couldn't disclose it.

She actually had a gag rule on her.

Right.

I mean, is that illegal to lie when you're a medical provider, regardless of whether you're working for a Catholic hospital or not?

I don't think it's illegal.

No.

And she didn't lie.

She just, you know, the sin of omission, I guess.

Senator Duckworth persevered and uses her own experience to make a compelling case.

My girls are my everything, and for them I would do anything but Abigail and Maile might never have been born if it were not for the basic reproductive rights Americans have been depending on for nearly a half century.

I might never have had my beautiful, incredible drive me crazy, yet I love them infinitely girls.

If Roe v Wade had not paved the way for women to make their own health care decisions as I was only able to get pregnant through IVF.

All right so, then we see the Dobbs decision out of the Supreme Court late last summer.

And now you have actually last year, you, along with Senator Patty Murray and others, put together a bill to help families who want to get IVF and whose rights to do so may be threatened by the Dobbs decision.

Most Americans see that as the decision that outlawed federal protections for abortion, which of course, turned it all over to the states.

So laws vary greatly from state to state.

Why would Dobbs be able to be used against people who the opposite of wanting to have an abortion, want to build families?

Because it does turn it over to the states.

And that means the states can decide what a person is so that these personhood amendments that say a fertilized egg is a human being with equal rights to you or I.

And so when I was going through IVF, at one point we fertilized five eggs, three of which were non-viable.

So we discarded those.

That very act of discarding those fertilized eggs could be construed as either manslaughter or even murder.

Should a state choose to define a human life as a fertilized egg.

it makes IUDs Manslaughter or murder because an IUD prevents a fertilized egg from implantation.

And so that is why we wrote the Right to Build Families Act, to help protect the right to IVF and other assisted reproductive technologies for all Americans.

And this is not like, you know, a nebulous thing.

This is a very real threat because in Texas, the right to life folks in Texas who wrote the Texas bounty laws on abortion have come out and said that they want control of the embryos from IVF In states like Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky, where they define a fertilized egg as an unborn child.

That will potentially put IVF procedures and other procedures that families who are relying on fertility treatments to start a family on it will put those procedures out of reach of so many Americans because of IVF.

I got to experience the joys of motherhood.

But with the systematic decades of work that Republicans have done to undermine Roe and take away women's autonomy over their own bodies.

Right now, a woman's right to access basic necessary health care is on the line.

And I've heard many of my Republican colleagues say, oh, no, no, no, we're just going to outlaw abortion.

We're not going to outlaw fertility treatments.

Well, I'm just going to quote the Association of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, who just sent out a very urgent bulletin that says measures and I quote, measures designed to restrict abortion could also curtail access to family building treatments upon which our patients rely to build their families.

And they could put those doctors at risk and it could put them in federal jeopardy if there were a federal ban.

Because every time a doctor looks at a fertilized egg like they did with mine and said, you know what, You have four fertilized eggs.

These two are not viable, We're going to discard those and we're going to implant two.

He could be guilty of murder for those two eggs that were not viable, that were discarded.

And then of the two eggs that he implanted in me that were fertilized, knowing that only one would take, he could be convicted of manslaughter when the other egg failed to implant.

This is what we're doing.

Illinois is already a state where women will drive a thousand miles to come to us for reproductive choice.

We welcome them.

We welcome women who come as far as Texas to Illinois to either obtain an abortion or to get whatever help that they need.

This is wrong that they have to do that because we are putting women, especially women of color, especially women who are on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum in jeopardy.

And as far as they were concerned, every fertilized egg must be implanted regardless of viability, regardless of the fact that there may be a gag order at Catholic hospitals on In Vitro Fertilization.

And of course, at least according to some church doctrine, I'm sure there's a split in the church, but there are I would assume there's a split in the church, if the abortion decision was not popular and actually increase Democratic action on abortion rights and has led to huge protests and will continue to do so And it's supposed to be an issue that will help the Democratic Party in the next elections.

Do you think that if the Republicans charge ahead with now outlawing IVF, which is popular to probably a whole different crowd of people than those who support abortion rights, that they'll make further enemies among the grassroots voters?

Well, we've seen time and again in states where they've attempted to ban abortion or access to abortion.

And when they've done that in places like Kansas or Michigan, and when you put the referendum to the population, they've overturn those anti-abortion rights laws.

And so it's very clear that the American people are in a very different place from Republican legislators and Republican governors who are on this track that really is not consistent with where their own constituencies are.

When you outlaw abortion outright, even in the cases of rape, incest or the health of the mother, you put women in jeopardy.

I had to have a D&C.

I had a miscarriage.

And in order to pursue my beautiful rainbow baby that I had, I had to have a D&C in order to clear out my uterus, in order to continue with my fertility treatments.

That option would now be unavailable to me where I had to live in some of these states that have these snapback rules on abortion.

And frankly, people don't want government in their doctors offices.

You know, for me, this concern is about individual human beings less so than election cycles.

But it is very true that these Republican led legislatures who are forcing these laws upon their own states are seeing them overturn when it's been put to a referendum of their own people.

I just want to bring this up a little bit before we go further into the bill that you sponsored.

After you had your second child, you took her on the Senate floor with you and of course, first sitting senator with an infant.

And who brings the child to the Senate floor.

And it created all kinds of publicity, which you didn't want.

Tell us about that.

Yes, it was my second daughter, Maile Pearl.

You know, at the time, the Senate was evenly split.

So we had to have everyone show up to vote.

And in the Senate, you have to vote in person.

And so I was going on maternity leave.

Well actually, senators don't get maternity leave because we don't get leave.

You're always on call because you have to come in to vote.

So I had my daughter and ten days later I had to come in for a vote.

And so I said, I can't leave a ten day old child by herself.

If I can't bring her on to the floor, I can't do my job.

You have to let me be able to do my job.

And unlike the House of Representatives, Speaker Pelosi changed the rules back in 2007 to allow children up to the age of 12 onto the floor of the House of Representatives.

But in the Senate, they never changed the rules.

And so I had to fight pretty hard to be allowed to bring my daughter onto the floor just so I could do my job, which was to vote and represent the people of Illinois because I wasn't entitled to maternity leave as a senator.

Senators are always on duty.

And so and you have if there's a vote, you've got to show up or you missed the vote.

And I have to represent the people of my state.

And you can't hand your child over to a staff member because they're a federal employee.

And that's a personal task.

you know, so we got the rules changed, bottom line.

And now more of the men have brought babies onto the floor than the women have.

That's fabulous.

That's very interesting.

I did not know that angle to this story.

All right.

So let's go back to 2022.

You introduced your bill to protect, you know, a federal right to IVF In this scary, precarious post Dobbs world, we cannot risk one more state getting one inch closer to stripping one more person of the right to build their family, how they choose when they choose.

That's why today I asked my colleagues to pass with unanimous consent my Right to Build Families Act, which would ensure that every American's fundamental right to become a parent via IVF is actually truly protected regardless of a person's zip code.

My bill would keep states from banning assisted reproductive technology known as ART, including IVF.

It would protect health care providers who provide ART or related counseling and would allow the Department of Justice to pursue civil action against states that violate this legislation because no one should feel that someone else's religious beliefs or partisan slants could rob her of her chance to get pregnant.

And no doctor should have to risk becoming a criminal in their state's eyes just for providing women the health care they need to start families.

Let's be very clear.

If you believe in basic logic, then you know that there's no chance that these kinds of extremist Republicans have any right to call themselves pro-life.

If they cared about fostering life.

Maybe, I don't know.

Maybe, just maybe, they wouldn't try to stop women like me from creating it.

But Cindy Hyde-Smith from Mississippi, she you wanted to bring your bill to the floor by unanimous consent, which meant if nobody objected, it became law.

She, of course, objected.

Tell me about that Well, this is what they do is they pick who someone who will come up and oppose it.

And they picked her to do it.

I mean, they weren't going to put a man up there, as I spoke very passionately about the fact that I wouldn"t have my beautiful baby girls without the miracle of IVF.

And so because she stood up and opposed it, we were not able to pass the bill.

And you know, these these are folks who say that they are pro-life.

I'm pro-life too, right?

I'm pro starting a family.

And you want to prevent a piece of legislation that would guarantee folks the right to start a family, access to IVF This would seem something that is not inconsistent with what the pro-life community wants.

But truly what they're talking about isn't about being truly pro-life and pro starting families.

They just want to stop other people from being able to have a say over their own reproductive health care.

One anti-choice group, even admitted to GOP legislators that they consider figuring out how to go after IVF treatments, and I quote, next year, two years from now, three years from now, if you're thinking that this makes no sense.

You're right.

You're not misunderstanding anything.

You're not missing something.

It's the ultimate nightmarish blend of hypocrisy and misogyny that you think it is.

The very people who claim to be defending family values are actively shouldering policies that would prevent millions of Americans from starting families.

In the most extreme version, They're pushing their kind of so-called personhood bills that paint women undergoing IVF as criminals.

And our doctors as killers.

Not all Catholics even are unified around the fact or evangelicals, for that matter, that religion tells them they're not allowed to use In Vitro Fertilization.

Same thing about abortion.

But on the abortion side, what some cases are now starting to work their way up through the courts, which says, okay, people can say you don't have a right to abortion because it violates my religious beliefs.

And they're using other religious groups that do support abortion rights, such as I'm just throwing types out here.

Some smaller Christian churches, Reform Judaism, believes that if there's a pregnancy and the mother is in danger, that she should be able to terminate rather than lose her life.

And there are other exceptions.

Do you think you could play that same semantic game, if you would, with IVF?

Well, if you're outlawing abortion, you're saying you're you're believing that you don't want any children who are who are conceived to be aborted and somehow use that logic to justify using IVF to have children.

Well, you know, this is why I introduced my bill, because I don't want to get into the semantics of it.

I just want to protect the rights of all Americans to build families.

And I want to protect the rights of all Americans to, on their own, make a decision within themselves, between themselves and their doctors, what is appropriate for them when it comes to the choice to have or not have a child.

And I think, you know, enshrining Roe v Wade into law with the restrictions that were in Roe v Wade, I think is reasonable.

And I think it's reasonable to say that people should have access to IVF if that's how they want to start families and if they want to use these reproductive technologies that exist.

And you know who this is going to hurt the most are poorer women.

You know, rich women are always going to be able to get on an airplane and fly to Europe or travel to another state and then take the time off from work.

But poorer women, lower income women, do not have that access in the same way.

So today, tomorrow and the tomorrow after that, each of us need to keep pushing.

We need to keep working and fighting until we pass legislation that ensures women have the same say over their bodies that men have.

And you can count on me to stick with this fight as long as it takes.

And so this becomes even more a challenge for working families.

And frankly, I don't think that any one of us should be in a position to tell someone that they don't have the right to start a family if they want to.

But do you think that line of reasoning could be used to try to get your bill passed?

And then when you answer that, please, what other options are there, if any, now that Senator Hyde-Smith blocked it on the Senate floor?

Well, let's add that line of reasoning.

The problem is that the Republicans are not following any line of reasoning.

They're just blanket opposing it.

And so it's not about logic at this point.

We can continue to go and ask for unanimous consent.

We can also go and try to put this into other pieces of legislation.

I've introduced the bill on its own.

We could actually bring it to a floor for a vote on its own, but it would take 60 votes.

And the Republicans would filibuster it.

And that's that's part of the issue as well.

What about other possibilities?

Is there a workaround here or are you stuck Because of one Senator?

We're stuck until we're stuck until we have 60 Democrats who are willing to vote for the bill.

Do you think that might happen in the next election?

Well, you know, the Republicans did with the Supreme Court.

The Republicans, you know, I mean, this is something that the American people, when they go to the polls in 2024, need to keep in mind and vote accordingly.

Is the major problem with IVF.

The fact that people freeze unused embryos and they are as opposed to perhaps disposing of them, I don't know.

Is that the major objection of the church members who are opposing your bill?

No.

Texas Right to Life has said that every embryo, every fertilized egg, because a fertilized egg isn't even an embryo yet.

Every fertilized egg must be implanted regardless of viability.

So it's not even about the ones that are frozen.

It's about the ones that are discarded because they can tell that there's a genetic mutation or that they're non-viable.

So it's not even about frozen embryos.

This is about Texas right for life saying you must implant every fertilized egg because every fertilized egg is a human being with equal rights to you or me.

So wait a second.

So they're saying that IVF is okay, but when you fertilize whatever number of eggs you fertilize, you must implant them all, regardless of whether you want two or five children and regardless of whether one of them is is defective and stands the chance of killing the mother?

That's the position, as I understand it.

Yes.

Thank you, Senator Duckworth.

That's it for this edition.

Let's keep the conversation going on Threads, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and a host of social media platforms and visit our web site, PBS.ORG/tothecontrary.

And whether you agree or think, To the Contrary See you next time.

( Music) Funding for To the Contrary is provided by E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation The Park Foundation and the Charles A. Frueauff Foundation Funding for to the contrary provided by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation the Park Foundation and the Charles A. Frueauff foundation.

Coming up on “To the Contrary, ” when I was going through IVF, at one point we fertilized five eggs, three of which were non-viable.

So we discarded those that very act of discarding those fertilized eggs could be construed as either manslaughter or even murder.

So that is why we wrote the Right to Build Families Act to help protect the right to IVF and other assisted reproductive technologies for all Americans.

Music Hello, I'm Bonnie Erbé Welcome to “To the Contrary, ” a discussion of news and social trends from diverse perspectives.

This week, Senator Tammy Duckworth, Democrat from Illinois, joins us to talk about the future of women's reproductive rights now that the Supreme Court has overturn Roe v Wade.

That decision may impact more than women seeking abortions and women's health care.

It could have a profound effect on In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), a procedure that has enabled millions of American couples to have babies.

Senator Duckworth has been a tireless advocate for reproductive rights for all women.

When exactly was the moment that our country decided that American women no longer had the right to bodily autonomy or were no longer capable of making decisions, good decisions about their own bodies.

This country, and those Republicans were certainly alright with me making that choice to use my body as I saw fit when I signed up to fight wars on this country's behalf.

They were just fine for me to decide to use my arms and legs to fly a Black Hawk helicopter into combat.

And no one minded and in fact honored me when I lost those limbs in defense of this great nation.

So I was competent to make those decisions about how I was going to use my body.

So my question is, when do the folks arguing anti-choice positions, arguing that we should not allow veterans reproductive health care?

When did they think I lost the competence to make decisions about my uterus that they thought I had about using my arms and legs?

Over the past year, since the Dobbs decision We have faced an onslaught of anti-choice bills that would effectively turn women into second class citizens.

The people who should feel shame are those who claim to be pro-life, yet would let a mother die in childbirth for an unviable pregnancy.

No one in the District of Columbia should have to fear facing punishment from their boss for trying to start or expand their family.

My amendment would have prohibited an employer from discriminating against an employee who uses infertility treatments.

I recently experienced the extreme joy of becoming a mother for the first time.

This miracle was not possible without the aid of In Vitro Fertilization.

And I'd be damned if I let my daughters grow up in a country that gives them fewer rights than their mom had.

Even though it is disheartening that we still need to have this debate about whether women should be in control of their own bodies, I am proud to be here with my colleagues to iterate that Democrats are not going to give up when it comes to protecting reproductive rights no matter what.

Welcome, Senator Duckworth.

It's great to see you again.

It's good to be on.

Thanks for having me.

Happy to.

I heard you in one instance, tell the story of your own attempt to have children by In Vitro, which was just the most horrible thing, I thought.

What was done to you.

Can you please tell our audience all about that, please?

Yes, So when I started when my husband and I decided we were going to try to have children.

I was in my early forties and I went to the VA because that's where I get my health care.

And every VA hospital is affiliated with a teaching university hospital.

It's why you get such great health care at the VA is because you actually have a research institution.

And my VA did not have fertility services, so they referred me.

My women's health doctor referred me to the university affiliated Medical University.

And I went to that and when I went, the fertility doctor there wouldn't even see me in the clinic.

She just came out and sat with me in the waiting room.

She pulled me aside and said, Well, you're 42.

You're too old.

There's no fertility treatments for you.

The best.

If even if you did fertility treatments, you would have a 0.5% of success.

And so just go home and enjoy your husband.

And it turned out later on when I found like several years later, when I found myself to a fertility doctor at Northwestern University after another woman, a friend of mine said, You need to go.

You need to go.

And I made it there at 44 and a half, almost 45.

The doctor said, Was it a Catholic university?

I said, Yes, it was.

Well, they opposed IVF, so she was never going to tell you that that was an available treatment.

And I just thought, how is this possible that this information was withheld from me?

The way she presented it was that there was no options for me at all, but it was because it was a Catholic university.

And they never disclosed that?

They never disclosed that.

They never said we're a Catholic institution.

The forms of IVF we could provide you would not work for you.

But there are these other options.

But you would have to go somewhere else.

They never said that.

They just said you are not you are not a candidate for IVF.

Just go home and enjoy your husband, which, by the way, my husband thought was great, but (Laughter) No, but it's kind of who needs a doctor to tell you that?

You know, it's it's not treating you with the respect you deserve.

I think it's malpractice because you didn't tell me what all my options were.

She couldn't disclose it.

She actually had a gag rule on her.

Right.

I mean, is that illegal to lie when you're a medical provider, regardless of whether you're working for a Catholic hospital or not?

I don't think it's illegal.

No.

And she didn't lie.

She just, you know, the sin of omission, I guess.

Senator Duckworth persevered and uses her own experience to make a compelling case.

My girls are my everything, and for them I would do anything but Abigail and Maile might never have been born if it were not for the basic reproductive rights Americans have been depending on for nearly a half century.

I might never have had my beautiful, incredible drive me crazy, yet I love them infinitely girls.

If Roe v Wade had not paved the way for women to make their own health care decisions as I was only able to get pregnant through IVF.

All right so, then we see the Dobbs decision out of the Supreme Court late last summer.

And now you have actually last year, you, along with Senator Patty Murray and others, put together a bill to help families who want to get IVF and whose rights to do so may be threatened by the Dobbs decision.

Most Americans see that as the decision that outlawed federal protections for abortion, which of course, turned it all over to the states.

So laws vary greatly from state to state.

Why would Dobbs be able to be used against people who the opposite of wanting to have an abortion, want to build families?

Because it does turn it over to the states.

And that means the states can decide what a person is so that these personhood amendments that say a fertilized egg is a human being with equal rights to you or I.

And so when I was going through IVF, at one point we fertilized five eggs, three of which were non-viable.

So we discarded those.

That very act of discarding those fertilized eggs could be construed as either manslaughter or even murder.

Should a state choose to define a human life as a fertilized egg.

it makes IUDs Manslaughter or murder because an IUD prevents a fertilized egg from implantation.

And so that is why we wrote the Right to Build Families Act, to help protect the right to IVF and other assisted reproductive technologies for all Americans.

And this is not like, you know, a nebulous thing.

This is a very real threat because in Texas, the right to life folks in Texas who wrote the Texas bounty laws on abortion have come out and said that they want control of the embryos from IVF In states like Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky, where they define a fertilized egg as an unborn child.

That will potentially put IVF procedures and other procedures that families who are relying on fertility treatments to start a family on it will put those procedures out of reach of so many Americans because of IVF.

I got to experience the joys of motherhood.

But with the systematic decades of work that Republicans have done to undermine Roe and take away women's autonomy over their own bodies.

Right now, a woman's right to access basic necessary health care is on the line.

And I've heard many of my Republican colleagues say, oh, no, no, no, we're just going to outlaw abortion.

We're not going to outlaw fertility treatments.

Well, I'm just going to quote the Association of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, who just sent out a very urgent bulletin that says measures and I quote, measures designed to restrict abortion could also curtail access to family building treatments upon which our patients rely to build their families.

And they could put those doctors at risk and it could put them in federal jeopardy if there were a federal ban.

Because every time a doctor looks at a fertilized egg like they did with mine and said, you know what, You have four fertilized eggs.

These two are not viable, We're going to discard those and we're going to implant two.

He could be guilty of murder for those two eggs that were not viable, that were discarded.

And then of the two eggs that he implanted in me that were fertilized, knowing that only one would take, he could be convicted of manslaughter when the other egg failed to implant.

This is what we're doing.

Illinois is already a state where women will drive a thousand miles to come to us for reproductive choice.

We welcome them.

We welcome women who come as far as Texas to Illinois to either obtain an abortion or to get whatever help that they need.

This is wrong that they have to do that because we are putting women, especially women of color, especially women who are on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum in jeopardy.

And as far as they were concerned, every fertilized egg must be implanted regardless of viability, regardless of the fact that there may be a gag order at Catholic hospitals on In Vitro Fertilization.

And of course, at least according to some church doctrine, I'm sure there's a split in the church, but there are I would assume there's a split in the church, if the abortion decision was not popular and actually increase Democratic action on abortion rights and has led to huge protests and will continue to do so And it's supposed to be an issue that will help the Democratic Party in the next elections.

Do you think that if the Republicans charge ahead with now outlawing IVF, which is popular to probably a whole different crowd of people than those who support abortion rights, that they'll make further enemies among the grassroots voters?

Well, we've seen time and again in states where they've attempted to ban abortion or access to abortion.

And when they've done that in places like Kansas or Michigan, and when you put the referendum to the population, they've overturn those anti-abortion rights laws.

And so it's very clear that the American people are in a very different place from Republican legislators and Republican governors who are on this track that really is not consistent with where their own constituencies are.

When you outlaw abortion outright, even in the cases of rape, incest or the health of the mother, you put women in jeopardy.

I had to have a D&C.

I had a miscarriage.

And in order to pursue my beautiful rainbow baby that I had, I had to have a D&C in order to clear out my uterus, in order to continue with my fertility treatments.

That option would now be unavailable to me where I had to live in some of these states that have these snapback rules on abortion.

And frankly, people don't want government in their doctors offices.

You know, for me, this concern is about individual human beings less so than election cycles.

But it is very true that these Republican led legislatures who are forcing these laws upon their own states are seeing them overturn when it's been put to a referendum of their own people.

I just want to bring this up a little bit before we go further into the bill that you sponsored.

After you had your second child, you took her on the Senate floor with you and of course, first sitting senator with an infant.

And who brings the child to the Senate floor.

And it created all kinds of publicity, which you didn't want.

Tell us about that.

Yes, it was my second daughter, Maile Pearl.

You know, at the time, the Senate was evenly split.

So we had to have everyone show up to vote.

And in the Senate, you have to vote in person.

And so I was going on maternity leave.

Well actually, senators don't get maternity leave because we don't get leave.

You're always on call because you have to come in to vote.

So I had my daughter and ten days later I had to come in for a vote.

And so I said, I can't leave a ten day old child by herself.

If I can't bring her on to the floor, I can't do my job.

You have to let me be able to do my job.

And unlike the House of Representatives, Speaker Pelosi changed the rules back in 2007 to allow children up to the age of 12 onto the floor of the House of Representatives.

But in the Senate, they never changed the rules.

And so I had to fight pretty hard to be allowed to bring my daughter onto the floor just so I could do my job, which was to vote and represent the people of Illinois because I wasn't entitled to maternity leave as a senator.

Senators are always on duty.

And so and you have if there's a vote, you've got to show up or you missed the vote.

And I have to represent the people of my state.

And you can't hand your child over to a staff member because they're a federal employee.

And that's a personal task.

you know, so we got the rules changed, bottom line.

And now more of the men have brought babies onto the floor than the women have.

That's fabulous.

That's very interesting.

I did not know that angle to this story.

All right.

So let's go back to 2022.

You introduced your bill to protect, you know, a federal right to IVF In this scary, precarious post Dobbs world, we cannot risk one more state getting one inch closer to stripping one more person of the right to build their family, how they choose when they choose.

That's why today I asked my colleagues to pass with unanimous consent my Right to Build Families Act, which would ensure that every American's fundamental right to become a parent via IVF is actually truly protected regardless of a person's zip code.

My bill would keep states from banning assisted reproductive technology known as ART, including IVF.

It would protect health care providers who provide ART or related counseling and would allow the Department of Justice to pursue civil action against states that violate this legislation because no one should feel that someone else's religious beliefs or partisan slants could rob her of her chance to get pregnant.

And no doctor should have to risk becoming a criminal in their state's eyes just for providing women the health care they need to start families.

Let's be very clear.

If you believe in basic logic, then you know that there's no chance that these kinds of extremist Republicans have any right to call themselves pro-life.

If they cared about fostering life.

Maybe, I don't know.

Maybe, just maybe, they wouldn't try to stop women like me from creating it.

But Cindy Hyde-Smith from Mississippi, she you wanted to bring your bill to the floor by unanimous consent, which meant if nobody objected, it became law.

She, of course, objected.

Tell me about that Well, this is what they do is they pick who someone who will come up and oppose it.

And they picked her to do it.

I mean, they weren't going to put a man up there, as I spoke very passionately about the fact that I wouldn"t have my beautiful baby girls without the miracle of IVF.

And so because she stood up and opposed it, we were not able to pass the bill.

And you know, these these are folks who say that they are pro-life.

I'm pro-life too, right?

I'm pro starting a family.

And you want to prevent a piece of legislation that would guarantee folks the right to start a family, access to IVF This would seem something that is not inconsistent with what the pro-life community wants.

But truly what they're talking about isn't about being truly pro-life and pro starting families.

They just want to stop other people from being able to have a say over their own reproductive health care.

One anti-choice group, even admitted to GOP legislators that they consider figuring out how to go after IVF treatments, and I quote, next year, two years from now, three years from now, if you're thinking that this makes no sense.

You're right.

You're not misunderstanding anything.

You're not missing something.

It's the ultimate nightmarish blend of hypocrisy and misogyny that you think it is.

The very people who claim to be defending family values are actively shouldering policies that would prevent millions of Americans from starting families.

In the most extreme version, They're pushing their kind of so-called personhood bills that paint women undergoing IVF as criminals.

And our doctors as killers.

Not all Catholics even are unified around the fact or evangelicals, for that matter, that religion tells them they're not allowed to use In Vitro Fertilization.

Same thing about abortion.

But on the abortion side, what some cases are now starting to work their way up through the courts, which says, okay, people can say you don't have a right to abortion because it violates my religious beliefs.

And they're using other religious groups that do support abortion rights, such as I'm just throwing types out here.

Some smaller Christian churches, Reform Judaism, believes that if there's a pregnancy and the mother is in danger, that she should be able to terminate rather than lose her life.

And there are other exceptions.

Do you think you could play that same semantic game, if you would, with IVF?

Well, if you're outlawing abortion, you're saying you're you're believing that you don't want any children who are who are conceived to be aborted and somehow use that logic to justify using IVF to have children.

Well, you know, this is why I introduced my bill, because I don't want to get into the semantics of it.

I just want to protect the rights of all Americans to build families.

And I want to protect the rights of all Americans to, on their own, make a decision within themselves, between themselves and their doctors, what is appropriate for them when it comes to the choice to have or not have a child.

And I think, you know, enshrining Roe v Wade into law with the restrictions that were in Roe v Wade, I think is reasonable.

And I think it's reasonable to say that people should have access to IVF if that's how they want to start families and if they want to use these reproductive technologies that exist.

And you know who this is going to hurt the most are poorer women.

You know, rich women are always going to be able to get on an airplane and fly to Europe or travel to another state and then take the time off from work.

But poorer women, lower income women, do not have that access in the same way.

So today, tomorrow and the tomorrow after that, each of us need to keep pushing.

We need to keep working and fighting until we pass legislation that ensures women have the same say over their bodies that men have.

And you can count on me to stick with this fight as long as it takes.

And so this becomes even more a challenge for working families.

And frankly, I don't think that any one of us should be in a position to tell someone that they don't have the right to start a family if they want to.

But do you think that line of reasoning could be used to try to get your bill passed?

And then when you answer that, please, what other options are there, if any, now that Senator Hyde-Smith blocked it on the Senate floor?

Well, let's add that line of reasoning.

The problem is that the Republicans are not following any line of reasoning.

They're just blanket opposing it.

And so it's not about logic at this point.

We can continue to go and ask for unanimous consent.

We can also go and try to put this into other pieces of legislation.

I've introduced the bill on its own.

We could actually bring it to a floor for a vote on its own, but it would take 60 votes.

And the Republicans would filibuster it.

And that's that's part of the issue as well.

What about other possibilities?

Is there a workaround here or are you stuck Because of one Senator?

We're stuck until we're stuck until we have 60 Democrats who are willing to vote for the bill.

Do you think that might happen in the next election?

Well, you know, the Republicans did with the Supreme Court.

The Republicans, you know, I mean, this is something that the American people, when they go to the polls in 2024, need to keep in mind and vote accordingly.

Is the major problem with IVF.

The fact that people freeze unused embryos and they are as opposed to perhaps disposing of them, I don't know.

Is that the major objection of the church members who are opposing your bill?

No.

Texas Right to Life has said that every embryo, every fertilized egg, because a fertilized egg isn't even an embryo yet.

Every fertilized egg must be implanted regardless of viability.

So it's not even about the ones that are frozen.

It's about the ones that are discarded because they can tell that there's a genetic mutation or that they're non-viable.

So it's not even about frozen embryos.

This is about Texas right for life saying you must implant every fertilized egg because every fertilized egg is a human being with equal rights to you or me.

So wait a second.

So they're saying that IVF is okay, but when you fertilize whatever number of eggs you fertilize, you must implant them all, regardless of whether you want two or five children and regardless of whether one of them is is defective and stands the chance of killing the mother?

That's the position, as I understand it.

Yes.

Thank you, Senator Duckworth.

That's it for this edition.

Let's keep the conversation going on Threads, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and a host of social media platforms and visit our web site, PBS.ORG/tothecontrary.

And whether you agree or think, To the Contrary See you next time.

( Music) Funding for To the Contrary is provided by E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation The Park Foundation and the Charles A. Frueauff Foundation