A look at how federal officials have addressed reproductive threats
Most of the protections will boil down to Supreme Court decisions
With all the perils to reproductive care at the state political level, activists and observers have questioned what, if anything, the federal government can do to protect treatments and procedures like In Vitro Fertilization and abortion.
The federal government has done “precious little,” as Sean Tipton, chief advocacy and policy officer at the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, has described it.
“One of the lessons from the Alabama decision is that these things can happen quickly,” Tipton said. “And while we were tracking that case, we did not expect the kind of decision that came down.”
Federal legislators on both sides of the political aisle have suggested bills to address some legal threats at lower government levels. There are essential distinctions when comparing what Republicans have offered as solutions to those proposed by Democrats.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, facing a tough reelection campaign, has sought to moderate his position on reproductive rights by publicly endorsing IVF and introducing a bill that would protect it. There are significant problems with it, though. If a state bans IVF, it will lose access to its Medicaid funding. That creates a situation that adds to the challenges women face in getting reproductive care. The ASRM opposed the bill.
“We certainly are not going to promote access to needed reproductive treatments on the backs of poor women,” Tipton said. “We think we think that's a morally offensive choice.”
Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth introduced a separate bill that took a different tact. In January, she and others introduced the Right to Build Families Act, which would establish a statutory right to access IVF and other ART services, thereby pre-empting any state effort to limit such access and ensuring no hopeful parent—or their doctors—are punished for trying to start or grow a family. Republicans shot down that bill because they said it went beyond protecting IVF.
Later, in 2024, she introduced a similar piece of legislation, the Access to Family Building Act, that did much the same thing. It would prevent restrictions on IVF as well as an outright ban.
Abortion has faced similar hurdles in getting federal protections. After Roe fell, Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal introduced the bill, which would have codified abortion access.
As with state politics, some activists felt federal politicians hadn’t done enough.
Katie O’Connor, director of Federal Abortion Policy at the National Women's Law Center, said the major bill to protect abortion access was the Women’s Health Protection Act, explained the state of abortion politics at the Congressional, Presidential, and judicial arenas.
She said the divisions in Congress prevent it from making progress. President Joe Biden challenged many of the state restrictions, as with the EMTALA case and with the FDA’s authority to approve medication abortion. The Supreme Court will ultimately determine whether those challenges will succeed.
“What we have seen in the past two years since the Dobbs decision is that reestablishing the right isn't really going to be enough,” Dobbs said. “It's going to have to be really bolstered against future efforts to chip it away piece by piece, the way that we saw Roe fall in the first place.”