The wife of US vice presidential candidate Tim Walz has clarified that she and her husband did not go through in vitro fertilization (IVF) after he repeatedly alluded to the fertility treatments on the campaign trail.
In an interview with Glamour, Gwen Walz said they went through intrauterine insemination (IUI) treatments to conceive their daughter, Hope.
Mr Walz has repeatedly brought up the personal story of the the couple’s fertility woes on the campaign trail, while warning that Republicans want to restrict access to IVF and other reproductive rights for women.
During his first rally with presidential candidate Kamala Harris – which served as his introduction to many voters across the country – he talked about healthcare and the choice he believes each person has. “That includes IVF” he said, “and this gets personal for me and my family”.
Ms Walz shared more about their journey to becoming parents with Glamour and said a neighbour, who was a nurse, helped administer “the shots I needed as part of the IUI process”.
“Our fertility journey was an incredibly personal and difficult experience,” she said. “Like so many who have experienced these challenges, we kept it largely to ourselves at the time.”
She noted that their family decided to open up about the experience after seeing the attacks on fertility and reproductive rights, particularly in Alabama – where the state’s Supreme Court ruled frozen embryos were legally considered children and led to fertility clinics across the state shutting.
In turn, the state’s legislature passed a measure protecting doctors from the legal ramifications of destroying unused embryos.
The line has become a point of contention with Republicans now accusing Mr Walz of lying.
Conservatives have also been attacking Mr Walz over his military record, claiming he was both overstating his service and retired before his unit was deployed overseas.
“Today it came out that Tim Walz had lied about having a family via IVF,” Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Who lies about something like that?”
Mr Walz has made the personal story a hallmark of the Democratic presidential campaign rallies, sharing the years he and his wife went through fertility treatments, waiting for good news from a doctor and eventually naming their daughter Hope.
During one recent rally, the crowd started chanting his daughter’s name, which made the Minnesota governor get emotional.
Mia Ehrenberg, a campaign spokeswoman, denied Mr Walz had been misleading.
“Governor Walz talks how normal people talk,” she said. “He was using commonly understood shorthand for fertility treatments.”
IUI consists of placing sperm directly into a woman’s uterus and is known more commonly as artificial insemination.
It is sometimes tried as an alternative before the IVF process because it’s less expensive, invasive and controversial.
IVF consists of additional steps and includes hormones being injected to force more egg production, which are retrieved and then combined with sperm to create embryos.
IVF has faced political scrutiny due to questions about unused embryos and their destruction, which some conservatives believe is the same as killing an unborn child.
By BBC News
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