GOP senator caught red handed misleading voters about his 'IVF' bill

Matthew Chapman
September 18, 2024 

RAW STORY

Senator Rick Scott speaking with attendees at the 2021 Student Action Summit. (Gage Skidmore)

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) attacked Democratic colleagues this week for voting down a bill he called the "IVF with HSAs Act" — heavily implying in his official statement on the matter that the bill would have protected access to in vitro fertilization.

But his bill actually did nothing of the sort. And in fact, this week he also voted against an actual bill in the Senate that would have prohibited states from restricting the procedure.

"I have been called many names, some nice and some not so nice over the years – Governor, Senator, husband, dad… but my favorite is grandpa to my seven beautiful grandkids. Right now, my daughter is using in vitro fertilization, or IVF, to grow her family," said Scott's statement about his bill. "I support IVF 100%, and the truth about IVF is that it is one of the few unifying policies almost all Democrats and Republicans agree with ... If the Democrats and the Senate are serious about ensuring opportunities for families, we can start today by allowing this good bill to pass. Unfortunately, Democrats refused to do so today."

The problem is, Scott's bill isn't actually about in vitro fertilization — in fact, that term appears nowhere in the text.

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The "IVF" in Scott's bill is an acronym for "Increasing Value for Families." The bill is actually just a tax reform proposal that would increase access and contribution limits to health savings accounts (HSAs), and has nothing to do with protecting the legal right to IVF or any other medical procedure.

Scott justified this sleight of hand in his statement by claiming that the bill's tax changes would "help individuals and families better plan and pay for medical expenses, like in vitro fertilization (IVF)."

Ever since the Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe v. Wade, access to IVF has been in a perilous position, because some states' abortion bans have been written so broadly that they could theoretically apply to IVF, which requires the production of embryos but only ever implants a tiny fraction of them.

This issue was thrown into national prominence after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled frozen embryos had personhood rights; the GOP-backed state legislature ultimately reversed this amid an outcry, but absent a national law, any other state could theoretically restrict IVF on this basis.