Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and his wife Gwen Walz are sharing new details about their past fertility issues.
Since becoming Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate in the 2024 election, Tim Walz has been candid in campaign speeches about attacks against in vitro fertilization, characterizing the procedure as personal to his family.
But Gwen Walz is clarifying the type of fertility treatment the Walz family used to conceive their children. She said the couple underwent intrauterine insemination — not IVF — to have their two kids.
“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. The only person who knew in detail what we were going through was our next-door neighbor,” Gwen Walz said in a statement to CNN.
The topic of their fertility struggles has come up amid pushback from the Republican party regarding the IVF procedure.
In June, the Senate voted against the IVF Act, which would've expanded access to IVF services nationwide. The act had come in response to a February 2024 ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court that prompted hospitals in the state to briefly pause IVF services.
Walz has also publicly come after opponent JD Vance for opposing the act, crediting procedures like IVF for bringing his kids into his family
On Tuesday, Vance painted Walz as a "pathological" liar.
"Anybody who's had a friend or themselves gone through fertility treatments, you know the difference, so why lie about it?" Vance said.
In a statement to CNN, the Harris campaign defended Walz's characterization of the treatment, saying he "talks how normal people talk. He was using commonly understood shorthand for fertility treatments.”
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The difference between IVF and IUI
IVF and IUI are both treatments for infertility, but they are different procedures.
IVF involves the fertilization of an egg with a sperm in a laboratory, according to Yale Medicine.
With IVF, a female takes fertility drugs to stimulate the production of eggs, Yale Medicine says. Then, sperm is used to fertilize her extracted eggs in a lab. One or more fertilized eggs — known as embryos — are then implanted into the patient’s uterus. If and when the embryo attaches to the uterus, pregnancy occurs.
IUI, on the other hand, does not involve fertilization outside of the mother. The treatment helps increase the chances of a sperm fertilizing an egg.
During intercourse, a few hundred sperm reach the egg under ideal circumstances, according to Penn Medicine. But with IUI, a physician places millions of sperm directly into the uterus, getting it much closer to the egg. Essentially, it's giving the sperm a "head start," Penn Medicine said.
IUI is a form of artificial insemination, Penn Medicine said.
Infertility affects millions of Americans at some point in their lifetime, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
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