“Even if we wouldn’t make the same choice for ourselves, there’s a golden rule: Mind your own damn business,” Walz, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, said of reproductive care during his first rally with running mate Vice President Harris earlier this month.
“Look, that includes IVF. And this gets personal for me and my family,” he added.
The broad assumption was that Walz’s family went through IVF treatments to conceive their two children, and many major media outlets reported it as fact.
The Harris-Walz campaign clarified to The Hill on Tuesday that the couple did not use IVF, and instead relied on another common procedure called intrauterine insemination (IUI).
“Our fertility journey was an incredibly personal and difficult experience,” Gwen Walz said in a statement provided by the campaign. “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.”
Walz has said he and his wife used fertility treatments “like IVF” to have children. In a video posted on social media earlier this month by the Harris campaign, Walz implied his children were born through IVF in an attack on Republican vice-presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio).
“If it was up to him [Vance], I wouldn’t have a family because of IVF,” Walz said. “My kids were born … that way.”
IUI is different from IVF because it doesn’t involve creating or discarding embryos. Disposal of unused frozen embryos is a standard aspect of modern IVF services, which has put the treatment in the crosshairs of the anti-abortion movement.
It’s often the step couples take prior to IVF — it is less expensive, less invasive but less successful.
“Infertility is a deeply personal journey, but the Governor and Mrs. Walz came forward to share their story because they know that MAGA attacks on reproductive rights are putting all fertility treatments at risk,” Harris campaign spokeswoman Mia Ehrenberg said.
Ehrenberg said that in his previous comments alluding to IVF, Walz was talking “how normal people talk. He was using commonly understood shorthand for fertility treatments.”
