The Senate on Wednesday dived headlong into reproductive health issues, with Republicans blocking an effort to protect access to in vitro fertilization and the Budget Committee debating whether reproductive rights restrictions had an impact on the economy.
Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., blocked an attempt by Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., to fast-track a bill to protect access to IVF in the wake of an Alabama Supreme Court decision that frozen embryos used in IVF are considered unborn children under the state constitution’s personhood rights.
Hyde-Smith, who opposed an earlier version of Duckworth’s bill in 2022, once again opposed passing the bill, calling it a “vast overreach that is full of poison pills that go way too far.”
