Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s wife, Gwen, issued a statement to liberal-leaning news network CNN to clarify that she didn’t use the process of in-vitro fertilization to conceive a child as she shared new details concern the fertility struggles the couple have had. Why all of the deep personal information being shared to the public? Because Walz has been using their personal experience with this particular struggle for fodder on the campaign trail. Anything to win a vote, right?
According to CNN, Minnesota’s first lady said that they used a fertility treatment known as intrauterine insemination. Boy, that’s a mouthful. Can’t the medical establishment come up with names for things regular people can say without sounding like their five-years-old? Come on, man.
In campaign speeches since joining the Democratic ticket as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Walz has often characterized the issue of access to IVF treatment as “personal” to him and his family while sharing the story of his and his wife’s journey to conceiving their two children.
“This one’s personal for me about IVF and reproductive care,” Walz said to his supporters at a rally that took place in Glendale, Arizona, earlier in the month of August. “When we wanted to have children, we went through years of fertility treatment.”
And in an MSNBC interview in July, he continued attacking Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance for his opposition to a bill that would have guaranteed access to IVF nationwide, while appearing to link the treatment to the birth of his two children.
“Thank God for IVF, my wife and I have two beautiful children,” he went on to say.
The reason this matters is because IVF has become quite the hot button issues this year, and for good reason. Many of the fertilized embryos — human beings — die in the laboratory. Many want the procedure banned alongside abortion due to this horrific fact. Since many pro-abortion folk support IVF, it’s become something Democrats have latched on to. Walz thought his personal experience would provide him an opportunity to score big with that crowd. Except he didn’t even know that they used a different procedure.
Do you really want someone who doesn’t even know the method by which his children were brought into this world in charge of helping to run the country, being only a heartbeat away from the Oval Office? No thanks. Hard pass.
In a statement to CNN, Gwen Walz said that they tried intrauterine insemination, a process she described as “an incredibly personal and difficult experience.”
“Like so many who have experienced these challenges, we kept it largely to ourselves at the time – not even sharing the details with our wonderful and close family. The only person who knew in detail what we were going through was our next-door neighbor,” the statement read. “She was a nurse and helped me with the shots I needed as part of the IUI process. I’d rush home from school and she would give me the shots to ensure we stayed on track.”
Intrauterine insemination, like IVF, is a common fertility procedure used by couples trying to conceive. But anti-abortion groups have pushed state officials to restrict IVF — when an egg is removed from a person’s body and combined with sperm inside a lab before being implanted. During intrauterine insemination, known as IUI, sperm is placed directly in the uterus. The process is sometimes combined with ovulation induction, where medication stimulates the release of eggs. People experiencing infertility often start with IUI and move on to IVF if needed.
Not long after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, returning the issue of abortion to individual states, a number of anti-abortion groups started to push for restrictions to be placed on the practice of IVF. Earlier this year, in February, the Supreme Court in Alabama issued a ruling that said embryos created by the treatment should be considered children, which would then mean that the procedure could potentially be restricted under the state’s abortion law.
Mrs. Walz noted the ruling from Alabama as one of the reasons that she and her husband have been publicly sharing their struggles to conceive children.
“After seeing the extreme attacks on reproductive health care across the country – particularly, the efforts in Alabama that jeopardized access to fertility treatments – Tim and I agreed that it was time to formally speak out about our experience,” she commented in the statement to CNN.
Harris campaign spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg explained the Minnesota governor’s prior use of the term IVF to describe his family’s fertility issues by saying, “Governor Walz talks how normal people talk. He was using commonly understood shorthand for fertility treatments.” In a post on X Tuesday, Vance pounced on the admission, asking, “Who lies about something like that?”
In response to the statement from Gwen Walz, Barbara Collura, president and CEO of Resolve: The National Infertility Association, said the group regrets elevating stories suggesting the Walz family used IVF to conceive.
“RESOLVE regrets if our organization contributed to any confusion about how he became a parent. We support all paths to parenthood and have welcomed Gov. Walz’s support of our community and our advocacy issues, since our federal Advocacy Day in 2017 during his tenure in Congress,” Collura explained.
The bottom line is Walz lied in order to appeal to a specific subset of voters who are concerned about the issue to get their vote. We’v had enough liars in the White House, don’t you think?