Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance on Tuesday tried to paint his Democratic opponent Tim Waltz as a liar after he misstated his wife’s method of getting pregnant.
The Democratic VP candidate and Minnesota governor has championed reproductive rights as part of the ticket’s campaign platform, revealing the pain he and his wife Gwen Waltz endured through their years-long fertility struggle — but didn’t get the terminology right.
“Today it came out that Tim Walz had lied about having a family via IVF,” wrote Vance on X Tuesday. “Who lies about something like that?”
Walz and wife Gwen Walz had used intrauterine insemination, or IUI — not in vitro fertilization, commonly known as IVF.
IUI involves delivering a concentrated dose of sperm directly into a woman’s uterus during ovulation, a method also known as artificial insemination. IVF entails harvesting a woman’s eggs, combining them with sperm and creating embryos in a lab, which are then implanted.
If IUI fails, couples often turn to IVF to conceive.
When asked for specifics, Gwen Walz clarified she had not had to take the further step of IVF. Nonetheless, the road to conception was “an incredibly personal and difficult experience,” she told CNN.
Amanda Zurawski, who told Democratic National Convention-goers on Monday night about her own brush with death during an unviable pregnancy, said “it’s absolutely disgusting” to imply the Walz’s road was less painful than others’ quest for parenthood.
An Alabama Supreme Court ruling earlier this year decreed embryos are children spurred the Walzes to open up about their extremely personal struggles, she added.
Waltz has used it as a campaign cornerstone in his defense of reproductive rights.
“Gwen and I have two beautiful children because of reproductive health care like IVF,” Walz wrote on social media after the ruling. “This issue is deeply personal to our family and so many others.”
“Governor Walz talks how normal people talk,” Harris-Walz campaign spokeswoman Mia Ehrenberg told Huff Post. “The Trump campaign’s attacks on Mrs. Walz are just another example of how cruel and out of touch Donald Trump and JD Vance are when it comes to women’s health care. 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.”
With News Wire Services
