Political Quotes

“I want to thank Senator Murray for her leadership on reproductive freedom issues and my colleagues talking today about the IVF bill we just voted on. Once again, today, our Republican colleagues have shown us where their priorities truly lie. Despite insisting time and again how much they support the right to in vitro fertilization, or IVF, they just voted again, nearly unanimously, to block a bill providing that very right. For decades, IVF and other assisted reproductive technologies, or ART, have helped people who otherwise couldn't start families of their own. While some on the right like to depict IVF as some sort of new or untested technology, that is not so. The first baby delivered via IVF was more than 45 years ago. And since then, IVF have helped bring more than 10 million babies into this world. In fact, as a State representative in Hawaii in the eighties, I led the passage of a bill making Hawaii one of the first States in the Nation to require health insurers to cover IVF treatment. Earlier this year, I met Dr. Lori Kamemoto, an OB-GYN in Hawaii who, decades ago, helped deliver the first baby born in Hawaii via IVF. But now, thanks to the chaos created by Dobbs, a whole range of reproductive rights, including the right to IVF, are on the chopping block. Look at Alabama where the State Supreme Court invoked a ``fetal personhood'' law to call into question the legality of IVF, effectively halting IVF treatment in that State.…”